Design and Demonstration of Pouch-Type Lithium–Air Batteries

The present study reports the design of pouch-type lithium–air batteries (LABs) and the evaluation of their electrochemical performance. The air cathode consists of a mixture of ketjen black (KB) powder, Pt/IrO2 catalyst, and binder coated over carbon paper. In the first part, the electrochemical performance of the KB:Pt/IrO2 electrode was evaluated at the coin-cell level, and the results indicate that the cell with the KB:Pt/IrO2 electrode demonstrated 300 cycles before reaching the upper cutoff voltage (4.5 V). The excellent electrochemical performance at the coin-cell level motivated us to design pouch-type cells. The overall capacity of the pouch cell was 0.75 mAh, and the cell demonstrated 465 cycles. Destructive physical analysis (DPA) was conducted on the cycled pouch-type LABs to analyze the products on the surfaces of the cathode, anode, and separator through XRD, SEM, and FT-IR analyses, and the recovered cathode was successfully reused in coin cells.