Towards Reversible and Moisture Tolerant Aprotic Lithium-Air Batteries
<b>The development of moisture-tolerant, LiOH-based non-aqueous Li-O<sub>2</sub> batteries is a promising route to bypassing the inherent limitations caused by the instability of their typical discharge products, LiO<sub>2</sub> and Li<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>. The use of the I<sup>-</sup>/I<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup> redox couple to mediate the LiOH-based oxygen reduction and oxidation reactions has proven challenging to develop due to the multiple reaction paths induced by the oxidation of I<sup>-</sup> on cell charging. In this work we demonstrate a reversible LiOH-based Li-O<sub>2</sub> battery cycling through a 4 e<sup>-</sup>/O<sub>2</sub> process with low charging overpotential (below 3.5 V vs Li/Li<sup>+</sup>) by introducing an ionic liquid to a glyme-based electrolyte containing LiI and water. The addition to the ionic liquid increases the oxidizing power of I<sub>3</sub><sup>-</sup>, shifting the charging mechanism from IO<sup>-</sup>/IO<sub>3</sub><sup>- </sup>formation to O<sub>2</sub> evolution</b>
