Integrated Porous Cathode made of Pure Perovskite Lanthanum Nickel Oxide for Nonaqueous Lithium-Oxygen Batteries

The development of non-carbon electrodes for nonaqueous lithium-oxygen batteries has become a recent focus as carbon electrodes were found to be unstable. Conventional non-carbon electrodes are typically formed with a substrate/current collector, which will decrease the practical capacity. Here, we propose an integrated porous electrode made of LaNiO₃ that does not require a substrate/current collector. The porous structure allows the formation of nanosized pores on the walls of microsized pores, which facilitates the transport of both oxygen and lithium ions. Importantly, all the surfaces of the porous structure are catalytically active for electrochemical reactions. Experimental results show that the adoption of the electrode in the battery enables a capacity of 1.064mAhcm^-2 at a current density of 0.05mAcm^-2. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the battery can be cycled for at least 25cycles at a fixed capacity of 0.3mAhcm^-2, and the electrode shows no degradation after the cycles.