To fabricate a sustainable lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) battery, it is crucial to identify an optimum electrolyte. Herein, it is found that tetramethylene sulfone (TMS) and lithium nitrate (LiNO3) form the optimum electrolyte, which greatly reduces the overpotential at charge, exhibits superior oxygen efficiency, and allows stable cycling for 100 cycles. Linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) and differentia...

Lithium nitrate (LiNO3) is known as an important electrolyte additive in lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. The prevailing understanding is that LiNO3 reacts with metallic lithium anode to form a passivation layer which suppresses redox shuttles of lithium polysulfides, enabling good rechargeability of Li-S batteries. However, this view is seeing more challenges in the recent studies, and above a...

Challenges facing high-voltage/high-capacity cathodes, in addition to the longstanding problems pertinent lithium (Li)-metal anodes, should be addressed develop high-energy-density Li-metal batteries. This issue mostly stems from interfacial instability between electrodes and electrolytes. Conventional carbonate- or ether-based liquid electrolytes suffer not only volatility flammability but als...

The electrolytic stability windows of several aqueous electrolytes were investigated by a constant current method. The electrode potential range depended upon the value of the imposed current. The magnitude of this behavior varied with the salt solution, its concentration, and pH of the electrolyte. At a leakage current density of 50 A/cm2, a 5 M solution of LiNO3 had an electrolytic window of ...

We report an air electrode employing polyimide-coated carbon nanotubes (CNTs) combined with a redox mediator for Li-O2 cells with enhanced electrochemical performance. The polyimide coating on the carbon surface suppresses unwanted side reactions, which decreases the amount of accumulated reaction products on the surface of the air electrode during cycling. The redox mediators lower the overpot...

Organic carbonyl electrode materials of lithium batteries have shown multifunctional molecule design and high capacity, but have the problems of poor cycling and low rate performance due to their high solubility in traditional carbonate-based electrolytes and low conductivity. High-performance organic lithium batteries with modified ether-based electrolyte (2 m LiN(CF3SO2)2 in 1,3-dioxolane/dim...

A liquid electrolyte lithium/sulfur (Li/S) cell is a liquid electrochemical system. In discharge, sulfur is first reduced to highly soluble Li2S8, which dissolves into the organic electrolyte and serves as the liquid cathode. In solution, lithium polysulfide (PS) undergoes a series of complicated disproportionations, whose chemical equilibriums vary with the PS concentration and affect the cell...

Water-in-salt (WIS) electrolytes using super-concentrated organic lithium (Li) salts are of interest for aqueous Li-ion batteries. However, the high salt cost, viscosity, poor wettability, and environmental hazards remain a great challenge. Herein, we present localized water-in-salt (LWIS) electrolyte based on low-cost nitrate (LiNO3) 1,5-pentanediol (PD) as inert diluent. The addition PD maint...