A facile coprecipitation approach for synthesizing LaNiCoO as the cathode for a molten-salt lithium-oxygen battery

The cathode of a lithium-oxygen battery (LOB) should be well designed to deliver high catalytic activity and long stability, and to provide sufficient space for accommodating the discharge product. Herein, a facile coprecipitation approach is employed to synthesize LaNi 0.5 Co 0.5 O 3 (LNCO) perovskite oxide with a low annealing temperature. The assembled LOB exhibits superior electrochemical performance with a low charge overpotential of 0.03-0.05 V in the current density range of 0.1-0.5 mA cm −2 . The battery ran stably for 119 cycles at a high coulombic efficiency. The superior performance is ascribed to (i) the high catalytic activity of LNCO towards oxygen reduction/evolution reactions; (ii) the increased temperature enabling fast kinetics; and (iii) the LiNO 3 -KNO 3 molten salt enhancing the stability of the LOB operating at high temperature. The reaction pathway for Li 2 O generation on the surface of perovskite LaNi 0.5 Co 0.5 O 3 for a molten-salt lithium-oxygen battery operating at 160 °C is presented.