Deactivation of carbon electrode for elimination of carbon dioxide evolution from rechargeable lithium-oxygen cells.
Carbon has unfaired advantages in material properties to be used as electrodes. It offers a low cost, light weight cathode that minimizes the loss in specific energy of lithium-oxygen batteries as well. To date, however, carbon dioxide evolution has been an unavoidable event during the operation of non-aqueous lithium-oxygen batteries with carbon electrodes, due to the reactivity of carbon against self-decomposition and catalytic decomposition of electrolyte. Here we report a simple but potent approach to eliminate carbon dioxide evolution by using an ionic solvate of dimethoxyethane and lithium nitrate. We show that the solvate leads to deactivation of the carbon against parasitic reactions by electrochemical doping of nitrogen into carbon. This work demonstrates that one could take full advantage of carbon by mitigating the undesired activity.
IBM Research-Almaden, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, California 95120, USA.
Seok Ju
SJ
Kang
Central Glass International, Inc., 2033 Gateway PI., Ste. 569, San Jose, California 95110, USA.
Takashi
T
Mori
Central Glass International, Inc., 2033 Gateway PI., Ste. 569, San Jose, California 95110, USA.
Satoru
S
Narizuka
IBM Research-Almaden, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, California 95120, USA.
Winfried
W
Wilcke
IBM Research-Almaden, 650 Harry Road, San Jose, California 95120, USA.
Ho-Cheol
HC
Kim