Effect of the size-selective silver clusters on lithium peroxide morphology in lithium-oxygen batteries

Jun Lu, Lei Cheng, Kah Chun Lau, Eric Tyo, Xiangyi Luo, Jianguo Wen, Dean Miller, Rajeev S. Assary, Hsien Hau Wang, Paul Redfern, Huiming Wu, Jin Bum Park, Yang Kook Sun, Stefan Vajda*, Khalil Amine, Larry A. Curtiss

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

189 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Lithium-oxygen batteries have the potential needed for long-range electric vehicles, but the charge and discharge chemistries are complex and not well understood. The active sites on cathode surfaces and their role in electrochemical reactions in aprotic lithium-oxygen cells are difficult to ascertain because the exact nature of the sites is unknown. Here we report the deposition of subnanometre silver clusters of exact size and number of atoms on passivated carbon to study the discharge process in lithium-oxygen cells. The results reveal dramatically different morphologies of the electrochemically grown lithium peroxide dependent on the size of the clusters. This dependence is found to be due to the influence of the cluster size on the formation mechanism, which also affects the charge process. The results of this study suggest that precise control of subnanometre surface structure on cathodes can be used as a means to improve the performance of lithium-oxygen cells.

Original languageEnglish
Article number4895
JournalNature Communications
Volume5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2014
Externally publishedYes

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