Wang Huan-Feng, Wang Yu-Fei, Guan De-Hui, Wang Xiao-Xue, Ma Xin-Yue, Yuan Xin-Yuan, Xu Ji-Jing
College of Food and Chemical Engineering, Zhengzhou Key Laboratory of Functional Electrocatalysis and Chemical Energy Storage, Zhengzhou University of Technology, Zhengzhou, 450044, P. R. China.
State Key Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Preparative Chemistry, College of Chemistry, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, P. R. China.
Adv Sci (Weinh). 2025 Jun;12(21):e2414616. doi: 10.1002/advs.202414616. Epub 2025 May 5.
Photo-assistance is considered to be an effective approach to reducing the overpotential for lithium-oxygen (Li-O) batteries. However, the advancement is greatly hindered by the rapidly recombined photoexcited electrons and holes upon the discharging and charging processes. Herein, a breakthrough in overcoming these challenges is achieved by developing an efficient ferroelectric photocatalyst with spontaneous polarization-induced internal electric fields. Tungsten (W) doped BiTiNbO (BiTiNbO-W) as a photocatalyst exhibits enhanced anisotropic migration of photogenerated electrons and holes, which play a key role in reducing the overpotential in the discharge and charge processes, enabling the desirable spatial separation of carriers. Benefiting from the driving force for charge separation, the photocatalytic oxygen reduction and evolution reaction activity is largely improved. As a result, the BiTiNbO-W-based Li-O batteries have shown incremental round-trip efficiencies of 95.9% based on the ultra-high discharge voltage (3.25 V) and ultra-low charge voltage (3.39 V). Besides, the constructed photo-assisted Li-O batteries deliver a high rate capability and ultralong durability within 960 h. These findings demonstrate the crucial role of ferroelectric polarization in the improved photocatalytic reaction process, providing significant insight into addressing the overpotential bottleneck in Li-O batteries.
光辅助被认为是降低锂氧（Li - O）电池过电位的有效方法。然而，在充放电过程中，光激发电子和空穴的快速复合极大地阻碍了这一进展。在此，通过开发一种具有自发极化诱导内电场的高效铁电光催化剂，在克服这些挑战方面取得了突破。作为光催化剂的钨（W）掺杂的BiTiNbO（BiTiNbO - W）表现出增强的光生电子和空穴的各向异性迁移，这在降低充放电过程中的过电位方面起着关键作用，实现了理想的载流子空间分离。受益于电荷分离的驱动力，光催化氧还原和析氧反应活性得到了很大提高。结果，基于BiTiNbO - W的锂氧电池在超高放电电压（3.25 V）和超低充电电压（3.39 V）的基础上，往返效率提高到了95.9%。此外，构建的光辅助锂氧电池在960小时内具有高倍率性能和超长耐久性。这些发现证明了铁电极化在改善光催化反应过程中的关键作用，为解决锂氧电池中的过电位瓶颈提供了重要的见解。
