Comment on "Cycling Li-O₂ batteries via LiOH formation and decomposition"

Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan; Vikram Pande; K M Abraham; Alan C Luntz; Bryan D McCloskey; Dan Addison

doi:10.1126/science.aad8689

Comment on "Cycling Li-O₂ batteries via LiOH formation and decomposition"

Science. 2016 May 6;352(6286):667. doi: 10.1126/science.aad8689.

Authors

Venkatasubramanian Viswanathan¹, Vikram Pande², K M Abraham³, Alan C Luntz⁴, Bryan D McCloskey⁵, Dan Addison⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. [email protected].
² Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
³ Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
⁴ SUNCAT, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA 94025, USA.
⁵ Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley and Energy Storage and Distributed Resources Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
⁶ Liox Power Inc., 129 North Hill Avenue, Suite 103, Pasadena, CA 91106, USA.

PMID: 27151860
DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8689

Abstract

Based on a simple thermodynamic analysis, we show that iodide-mediated electrochemical decomposition of lithium hydroxide (LiOH) likely occurs through a different mechanism than that proposed by Liu et al (Research Article, 30 October 2015, p. 530). The mismatch in thermodynamic potentials for iodide/triiodide (I(-)/I3 (-)) redox and O2 evolution from LiOH implies a different active iodine/oxygen electrochemistry on battery charge. It is therefore possible that the system described in Liu et al may not form the basis for a rechargeable lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) battery.

Publication types

Comment