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All-inorganic nitrate electrolyte for high-performance lithium oxygen battery

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Abstract

Lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) batteries have been regarded as an expectant successor for next-generation energy storage systems owing to their ultra-high theoretical energy density. However, the comprehensive properties of the commonly utilized organic salt electrolyte are still unsatisfactory, not to mention their expensive prices, which seriously hinders the practical production and application of Li-O2 batteries. Herein, we have proposed a low-cost all-inorganic nitrate electrolyte (LiNO3−KNO3−DMSO) for Li-O2 batteries. The inorganic nitrate electrolyte exhibits higher ionic conductivity and a wider electrochemical stability window than the organic salt electrolyte. The existence of K+ can stabilize the O2− intermediate, promoting the discharge process through the solution pathway with an enlarged capacity. Even at an ultra-low concentration of 0.01 M, the K+ can still remain stable to promote the solution discharge process and also possess a new function of inhibiting the dendrite growth by electrostatic shielding, further enhancing the battery stability and contributing to the long cycle lifetime. As a result, in the 0.99 M LiNO3−0.01 M KNO3−DMSO electrolyte, the Li-O2 batteries exhibit prolonged cycling performance (108 cycles) and excellent rate performance (2 A·g−1), significantly superior to the organic salt one.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2020YFE0204500), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 52171194 and 52271140), the CAS Project for Young Scientists in Basic Research (No. YSBR-058), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (No. 2020230), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China Outstanding Youth Science Foundation of China (Overseas).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, 130022, China

    Dongyue Yang, Jiayi Du, Kai Chen, Haoran Zhang, Gang Huang, Tong Liu, Xinbo Zhang & Hongjie Zhang

  2. School of Applied Chemistry and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Dongyue Yang, Jiayi Du, Haoran Zhang, Gang Huang, Tong Liu, Xinbo Zhang & Hongjie Zhang

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  1. Dongyue Yang
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Yang, D., Du, J., Chen, K. et al. All-inorganic nitrate electrolyte for high-performance lithium oxygen battery. Nano Res. 17, 4163–4170 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-023-6353-z

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