Driving Oxygen Electrochemistry in Lithium-Oxygen Battery by Local Surface Plasmon Resonance

Although the lithium-oxygen (Li-O₂) battery brings hope for the improvement of high-energy rechargeable batteries, the sluggish oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and oxygen evolution reaction (OER) kinetics become the major stumbling block. Herein, the incorporation of a plasmonic silver cathode as an advanced strategy to promote ORR and OER kinetics due to strong local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) is introduced. Chronoamperometry results revealed that the highly energetic electrons and holes excited by LSPR of silver nanostructure facilitated ORR and OER kinetics ascribe to the emission of hot carriers in femtosecond time scale. Furthermore, a relatively rare discharge voltage 3.1 V is obtained, correspondingly, the charge plateau also decline to 3.3 V, the energy efficiency of Li-O₂ battery by a 23% increase in comparison with a commercial 5% Pt/C catalyst (discharge and charge plateau of 2.75 and 3.61 V). Additionally, the improvement in the efficient charge transfer manner result in a reversible spherical Li₂O₂ which further improve the ORR and OER kinetics. The LSPR strategy represents a critical step toward developing fast kinetics and high energy efficiency Li-O₂ batteries.