Lithium-air batteries sound too good to be true—using the oxygen available in the air to produce electricity. Theoretically, they could become serious competitors to lithium-ion batteries; but so far, a commercial reality hasn’t emerged. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Illinois and the Argonne National Laboratory have announced what could be a real breakthrough if their results can be replicated with identical performance of the battery. First, how do lithium-air batteries work? They use oxygen from the air to combine it with lithium in the anode and produce lithium peroxide. This is what happens during the discharge phase. During the charge phase, the lithium peroxide gets broken down back into lithium and oxygen. As simple as this sounds, there are several major challenges with the process. Lithium peroxide, for one, is a bad electron conductor , which compromises the battery’s effectiveness. What’s more, deposits of it […]