Design and Preparation of Oxygen Electrocatalysts for Nonaqueous Lithium-Oxygen Batteries

Abstract

Nonaqueous lithium-oxygen batteries (LOBs) have drawn substantial publicity because of their high theoretical specific energy and potential application for electric vehicles. The slow kinetics of oxygen reactions at the cathode is the most critical technical challenge, which is in principle solvable by using an effective catalyst system. This thesis research presents our designs of oxygen electrocatalysts that could improve the capacity, rate capability, and cycle stability for nonaqueous LOBs. Firstly we demonstrated AuPt alloy nanoparticles (NPs) supported on hollow mesoporous carbon spheres (AuPt/HMCMS) could be a good hybrid catalyst. We also explored for the first time noble metal clusters in conjunction with MnO2 as potential oxygen electrocatalysts. In addition, we described the carbon-coated flower-like aggregates of cobalt oxide NPs on multiwall carbon nanotubes (CoO-CNT) as a hybrid catalyst. At last, we evaluated the performance of hybrids of LaCoO3 NPs (LCO) with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets.