Presentation
Biomaterials Driven Pore Generation for Li-oxygen battery Cathodes
MRS Fall meeting
(2016)
Abstract
Synthetic pore templates provide an easy way to create porous structures, but their usage for large scale production is limited due to the process complexity and prohibitive cost of material. Here we investigate use of bacteria, a naturally abundant and environmentally friendly material, as a pore template and demonstrate their applicability in Li-oxygen battery cathode fabrication. Bacteria are approximately a million times cheaper, require no chemical synthesis, are available in different morphologies, and degrade easier than conventional pore templates. We fabricate free standing porous multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) films using bacteria as pore templates, and demonstrate the performance impact of porosity control on cathodes for Li-oxygen batteries. Film porosity as well as the shape of pores in the cathodes were easily tuned to achieve a 30% improvement in oxygen evolution efficiency and double the full discharge capacity in repeated cycles when compared to the compact MWCNT films. The interconnected pores effectively improved the accessibility of reactants throughout the cathode matrix allowing the porous MWCNT cathodes to achieve 8,649 Wh/kg of gravimetric energy density at a power of 4,942 W/kg under 2 A/ge (1.7 mA/cm2).
Disciplines
Publication Date
2016
Location
Boston, MA
Citation Information
Dahyun Oh, Cagla o. Akgun, Esin Akca, Leslie E. Thompson, et al.. "Biomaterials Driven Pore Generation for Li-oxygen battery Cathodes" MRS Fall meeting (2016) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/dahyun-oh/11/