Despite the ultrahigh energy density of rechargeable lithium–oxygen (Li-O 2 ) batteries, their practical use is still hindered by the poor performance of electrocatalysts. Recently, porous and hollow nanostructured catalysts have been found to be promising electrocatalysts toward the ORR/OER to improve the performance of Li-O 2 batteries. However, the catalytic activities of the catalysts are still insufficient and the nanopores are easily clogged by the insoluble discharge products. Herein, highly porous and hollow TiO 2– x nanoboxes (TiO 2– x NBs) with large surface areas, increased oxygen vacancies, and high grain boundary density have been developed as an electrocatalyst for Li-O 2 batteries via a cation-assisted synthetic approach. The Li-O 2 batteries with TiO 2– x NBs as the electrocatalyst exhibit a high specific capacity of 8569 mA h g –1, excellent rate capability, and long cycle life up to 200 cycles when the capacity is limited to 1000 mA h g –1 . Moreover, this cation-assisted approach for fine-tuning the nanostructure could be an innovative strategy to design efficient electrocatalysts for high-performance Li-O 2 batteries.
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Liu et al. (2018) studied this question.