High Performance Li-Air Battery Using Different Gaseous Species

In the first project, I developed an air-breathing sheet-type flexible Li-O2 battery operating under different conditions (oxygen, dry air, and ambient air). The flexible battery showed an excellent performance (370 cycles in pure oxygen, 250 cycles in dry air and 240 cycles in ambient air) under a high current density of 1 A/g. It was uncovered that there is an excellent synergy between different components of the battery including electrolyte/redox mediator, cathode catalyst and Fomblin-based protection layer suppressing H2O permeation into the battery cell. The battery operating in ambient air exhibited a superior performance including high charge/discharge curves stability, excellent rate capability and a deep-discharge capacity as high as 56 Ah/g before and after bending. The obtained results open a new direction in utilizing Li-O2 batteries in flexible and wearable electronics. In the second project, I developed a high performance Li-CO2 battery chemistry based on a novel combination of a mid-entropy cathode catalyst of (NbTa)0.5BiS3 and an electrolyte combination of ZnI2, lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and ionic liquid (IL) of 1-Ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMIM-BF4) with the volumetric ratio of 9:1. The battery is capable to operate under high rates (0.3, 0.5 mA/cm2) and high capacities of 0.2, 0.3 and 0.5 mAh/cm2 (corresponding to 2000, 3000, and 5000 mAh/g, respectively). The achieved capacities and current rates are by far the highest values to be reported in the literature for this type of battery. In the third project, I have developed Li-CO2 battery with novel cathode catalyst of Sb0.67Bi1.33Te3 that showed an excellent performance, up to 220 cycles at high current density of 1 mA/cm2, with capacity of 0.2 mA/cm2, far exceeding values reported in the literature for Li-CO2 battery. These results demonstrate the role of Chalcogenide (Te) and the optimized volume of ionic liquid in improving the battery performance and showed the crucial role of catalyst (Sb0.67Bi1.33Te3) in stabilizing the charge potential with high CO2ER capability.