title: Carbon-Free CoO Mesoporous Nanowire Array Cathode for High-Performance Aprotic Li-O2 Batteries.
abstract: Although various kinds of catalysts have been developed for aprotic Li-O2 battery application, the carbon-based cathodes are still vulnerable to attacks from the discharge intermediates or products, as well as the accompanying electrolyte decomposition. To ameliorate this problem, the free-standing and carbon-free CoO nanowire array cathode was purposely designed for Li-O2 batteries. The single CoO nanowire formed as a special mesoporous structure, owing even comparable specific surface area and pore volume to the typical Super-P carbon particles. In addition to the highly selective oxygen reduction/evolution reactions catalytic activity of CoO cathodes, both excellent discharge specific capacity and cycling efficiency of Li-O2 batteries were obtained, with 4888 mAh gCoO(-1) and 50 cycles during 500 h period. Owing to the synergistic effect between elaborate porous structure and selective intermediate absorption on CoO crystal, a unique bimodal growth phenomenon of discharge products was occasionally observed, which further offers a novel mechanism to control the formation/decomposition morphology of discharge products in nanoscale. This research work is believed to shed light on the future development of high-performance aprotic Li-O2 batteries.
authors.affiliation: Energy Storage Division, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Dalian 116023, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Baoshan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Energy Storage Division, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Dalian 116023, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Hongzhang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Energy Storage Division, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Dalian 116023, P. R. China.|University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100049, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Energy Storage Division, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Dalian 116023, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Meiri
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Energy Storage Division, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Dalian 116023, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xianfeng
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Energy Storage Division, Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Dalian 116023, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Huamin
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
keywords: CoO nanowire; Li−O2 battery; Li−air; carbon-free cathode; synergistic effect