Kinetically Stable Oxide Overlayers on Mo3P Nanoparticles Enabling Lithium–Air Batteries with Low Overpotentials and Long Cycle Life
Abstract
The main drawbacks of today's state‐of‐the‐art lithium–air (Li–air) batteries are their low energy efficiency and limited cycle life due to the lack of earth‐abundant cathode catalysts that can drive both oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR and OER) at high rates at thermodynamic potentials. Here, inexpensive trimolybdenum phosphide (Mo3P) nanoparticles with an exceptional activity—ORR and OER current densities of 7.21 and 6.85 mA cm−2 at 2.0 and 4.2 V versus Li/Li+, respectively—in an oxygen‐saturated non‐aqueous electrolyte are reported. The Tafel plots indicate remarkably low charge transfer resistance—Tafel slopes of 35 and 38 mV dec−1 for ORR and OER, respectively—resulting in the lowest ORR overpotential of 4.0 mV and OER overpotential of 5.1 mV reported to date. Using this catalyst, a Li–air battery cell with low discharge and charge overpotentials of 80 and 270 mV, respectively, and high energy efficiency of 90.2% in the first cycle is demonstrated. A long cycle life of 1200 is also achieved for this cell. Density functional theory calculations of ORR and OER on Mo3P (110) reveal that an oxide overlayer formed on the surface gives rise to the observed high ORR and OER electrocatalytic activity and small discharge/charge overpotentials.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Nov 09, 2020
- Source ID
- 10.1002/adma.202004028
Entities
People
- Alireza Kondori
- Andrew M Rappe
- Arvin Kakekhani
- Carlo U Segre
- Christopher S. Johnson
- John Hayes
- Kamil Kucuk
- Mahmoud Tamadoni Saray
- Mohammad Javad Asadi
- Mohammadreza Esmaeilirad
- Pablo Navarro Munoz Delgado
- Reza Shahbazian‐yassar
- Sadaf Maghsoudipour
- Zhen Jiang
Organizations
- Argonne National Laboratory
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- National Science Foundation
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences
- Office of Science
- United States Department of Defense
- United States Department of Energy
- University of Illinois at Chicago
- University of Pennsylvania