South Korean researchers achieve lithium-air battery breakthrough

Thursday 02 April 2026 - 12:20

By: Dakir Madiha

South Korean researchers achieve lithium-air battery breakthrough

A joint South Korean research team has developed a new catalyst that overcomes key performance barriers in lithium-air batteries, a technology long regarded as the holy grail of energy storage for its potential to deliver up to ten times the energy density of conventional lithium-ion systems.

Researchers from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and the Institute for Advanced Engineering (IAE), led by Dr. Sohee Jeong and Dr. Gwang-Hee Lee, engineered a two-dimensional catalyst based on tungsten diselenide (WSe₂) using atomic-scale defect engineering. The technique involves substituting platinum atoms into the layered structure of WSe₂ and deliberately creating selenium vacancies, transforming the material's normally inert basal plane into an active catalytic surface.

Those artificial vacancies act as catalytic hot spots that facilitate both the oxygen reduction reaction during discharge and the oxygen evolution reaction during charging, the two processes essential to lithium-air battery operation. The approach preserves the material's electrical conductivity, ensuring rapid electron transport.

In prototype testing, lithium-air batteries fitted with the new catalyst achieved stable operating lifespans exceeding 550 charge-discharge cycles at a 1C rate. The system outperformed established commercial catalysts, including platinum on carbon and ruthenium oxide, in both durability and efficiency across charge rates ranging from 0.1C to 3C. According to the peer-reviewed paper published in Materials Science and Engineering: R, the activated WSe₂ cathodes also delivered a discharge capacity of 9,868 milliampere-hours per gram.

Lithium-air batteries have long attracted research interest because they draw oxygen from ambient air rather than storing it internally, substantially reducing weight. However, slow oxygen reaction kinetics and poor catalyst durability have kept the technology confined to laboratories. The KIST-IAE work, published with the National Research Council of Science and Technology, offers a new pathway for maximizing the potential of two-dimensional materials in energy storage. If the technology can be scaled, it could accelerate the development of longer-range electric vehicles and grid-scale storage systems, though commercialization remains years away.