Non-aqueous rechargeable Al-O2 battery with a bifunctional catalyst of carbon microspheres

Non-aqueous secondary Al-O-2 batteries have recently received much attention due to their high theoretical capacity, element richness, safety and low cost, although there are still many problems to be overcome. In this paper, a type of Al-O-2 battery using AlCl3/[EMIm]Cl ionic liquid as electrolyte and carbon microspheres (CMs) as air electrode was considered. The batteries with CMs deliver a high specific capacity of 820 mAh g(-1) in the first cycle at the current density of 25mA g(-1) and a low charge voltage. In addition, CMs show better redox catalytic activity for O-2 compared with super-p (SP) and the Al-O-2 batteries have two obvious oxygen reduction processes corresponding to two reductive peaks.