Korean Researchers Develop Two-Dimensional Catalyst That Pushes Lithium-Air Batteries Past 550 Stable Cycles
A KIST-IAE team engineered a tungsten diselenide catalyst that achieved over 550 stable cycles in lithium-air batteries, outperforming conventional catalysts and advancing a technology with ten times the energy density of lithium-ion.
A joint research team from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and the Institute for Advanced Engineering (IAE) has developed a two-dimensional catalyst that breaks through longstanding performance barriers in lithium-air batteries, according to a study published in Materials Science and Engineering R: Reports. The catalyst, based on tungsten diselenide (WSe₂) modified through atomic-level defect engineering, demonstrated stable performance for more than 550 charge-discharge cycles under rapid operating conditions, outperforming widely used commercial catalysts.
Lithium-air batteries have long attracted research interest because they theoretically offer energy densities more than ten times greater than conventional lithium-ion cells. Their operating principle relies on the reaction between lithium and oxygen drawn from ambient air, but the technology has been held back by poor cycle life and the degradation of catalysts needed to drive the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) during discharge and the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) during charging. Commercial catalysts such as platinum on carbon (Pt/C) and ruthenium oxide (RuO₂) suffer from limited durability and declining performance over repeated cycles.
The KIST-IAE team, led by Dr. Jeong Sohee of KIST’s Center for Extreme Materials Research and Dr. Lee Kwang-hee of IAE’s Advanced Materials Processing Center, addressed these challenges by engineering WSe₂ at the atomic scale. The researchers substituted platinum atoms into the material’s layered structure and intentionally created selenium vacancies on the surface. These vacancies function as reaction sites that strongly adsorb and activate oxygen molecules, transforming the entire basal plane into an active catalytic surface rather than relying solely on edge sites, which had been the only catalytically active regions in previous two-dimensional materials.
The resulting battery demonstrated stable cycling at a 1C rate (1,000 mA/g) with minimal voltage and capacity variation over 550 cycles. The team tested the catalyst across charge-discharge rates ranging from 0.1C to 3C and found it consistently outperformed Pt/C and RuO₂ in both durability and efficiency. The research was conducted in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in the United States.
Dr. Jeong stated that the work “presents an atomic-level control strategy that utilizes the previously untapped basal plane” while preserving the structural advantages of two-dimensional materials, according to KIST.
The study, published in a journal ranked in the top 2.2 percent of its field with an impact factor of 26.8, represents a significant step toward making lithium-air batteries commercially viable. While substantial engineering challenges remain before the technology can reach production vehicles or grid-scale storage, the catalyst’s demonstrated stability under high-rate conditions addresses one of the most persistent obstacles that has kept lithium-air batteries confined to laboratory settings.