Manganese Oxide Catalysts for Lithium–Oxygen Batteries: Structures, Mechanisms, and Reaction Pathway Engineering

Description

Ruiqin Peng and colleagues review in 2026 manganese oxide catalysts for lithium-oxygen batteries, a chemistry whose energy density could dwarf today's lithium-ion cells. The promise stalls on sluggish reactions, side products, and insulating lithium peroxide crusting the cathode until the battery chokes. Manganese oxides appeal as rescuers because they are abundant, cheap, and structurally varied, coming in tunnel, layered, and spinel forms with adjustable oxidation states that host oxygen reactions and lithium traffic.

The review organizes recent engineering moves: reshaping pores, tuning surface sites, punching in defects, doping with foreign atoms, and building composites. Each lever shifts the catalyst's electronic structure and steers whether lithium peroxide forms as films or particles and how cleanly it decomposes on recharge, which decides polarization losses and cycle life. The authors close with the field's remaining obstacles and design guidelines meant to carry these catalysts toward practical cells.

Catalog record

Source: https://europepmc.org/article/MED/PMC13450241