Recently, the Junkai Wang team from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (School of Carbon Neutrality Future Technology) at Shantou University made new progress in the research field high-performance cathode catalysts for lithium–oxygen batteries. The related research findings were published under the title “Efficient and green recycling of waste LiNi_1-x-yCo_xMn_yO₂cathodes to NiCo₂O₄ catalysts for lithium-oxygen batteries” in Sustainable Materials and Technologies (impact factor: 9.7) in the field of chemical materials.

Paper link:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2025.e01479

English abstract of the paper:

As lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) production and waste continue to increase, extracting and recovering precious metals through environmentally friendly solvent processes has become imperative. Deep eutectic solvents (DES) are innovative green solvents with great potential for extracting valuable metallic elements from waste LIBs. This study used choline chloride/oxalate dihydrate DES to selectively separate the yield of nickelcobaltmanganese (NCM) cathodes. An efficient catalyst NiCo₂O₄ was synthesized from recycled NiC₂O₄·2H₂O and CoC₂O₄·2H₂O by a simple solvent hydrothermal method and applied to lithiumoxygen batteries. Electrochemical results show that the lithiumoxygen batteries (LOBs) assembled with this catalyst have an extremely low overvoltage of 0.19 V and a high specific capacity of 32,218 mAh g⁻¹. It exhibits stable cycling for 241 h at a current density of 500 mA g⁻¹. It shows that the recycling of waste NCM and its application in LOBs have broad prospects.