Li-Water Battery with Oxygen Dissolved in Water as a Cathode

In this work, we demonstrate a lithium-water battery that uses oxygen dissolved in water as a cathode, Sr0.95Ce0.05CoO3-delta (SCCO)-copper nanoparticles as an efficient bifunctional catalyst, and with hybrid electrolytes. The SCCO-Cu composite catalyst exhibits an efficient and stable bifunctional catalytic activity, especially for the OER. The round-trip efficiency of the cell with SCCO-Cu nanoparticles catalyst reaches 84.1%, close to that of the 50% Pt/carbon-black catalyst (87.2%). The improved performance of the SCCO-Cu catalyst can be ascribed to the synergetic effect of SCCO and copper. The preliminary results demonstrate that the rechargeable lithium-water battery with oxygen dissolved in water flow can be achieved with high efficient and low cost oxide catalyst. This can be a good candidate for a large stationary energy storage system (ESS) with a low-cost. (C) 2013 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.