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BATTERIES

Thousands of cycles

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 301–302 (2019)Cite this article

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Potassium–air batteries, which suffer from oxygen cathode and potassium metal anode degradation, can be cycled thousands of times when an organic anode replaces the metal.

Mobile energy sources are the engine of modern society. One of the most advanced sources, lithium-ion batteries, are approaching the limits of their development potential in terms of energy storage. Moreover, with the widespread adaptation of batteries into large-scale applications, other properties such as eco-friendliness and cost are becoming more important1. These additional requirements have spurred tremendous research into alternatives2, such as metal–air batteries3. Theoretically, these store more energy per unit mass because they use alkali metals (lithium, sodium or potassium) at the anode and oxygen — drawn from air — at the cathode, instead of expensive and toxic cobalt at the cathodes in current lithium-ion batteries. While metal–air batteries involve seemingly simple reactions, parasitic reactions degrade cell components, severely limiting cycle life. Now, writing in Nature Materials, Yi-Chun Lu and co-workers4 show that one variant, the potassium–O2 (K–O2) battery, can achieve an impressive cycle life of several thousand cycles by meticulously excluding the origins of degrading processes.

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Fig. 1: Thermodynamics of the potassium–O2 cell.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria

    Yann K. Petit & Stefan A. Freunberger

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  1. Yann K. Petit
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  2. Stefan A. Freunberger
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Correspondence to Stefan A. Freunberger.

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Petit, Y.K., Freunberger, S.A. Thousands of cycles. Nat. Mater. 18, 301–302 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0313-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0313-8

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