Screen printed cathode for non-aqueous lithium-oxygen batteries

An issue with conventional non-aqueous Li-O2 battery cathodes that are formed by spraying/brushing/casting/coating carbon black slurries is a lack of sufficiently large pores, vulnerable to clogging by solid discharge products, and hence resulting in a low capacity. In this work, we report a novel cathode structure formed by screen-printing method. This deposition method allows the creation of evenly distributed large pores (∼10 μm). As compared with the cathode formed by slurry-coating method, the cathode formed by the present method increases the battery's capacity by two times. The cyclability is also seen a significant improvement. The improved performance may be attributed to large pores that give more appropriate distributions of discharge products and hence facilitate the transportation of oxygen during cycling.