Freestanding NiMoO4/carbon cloth electrodes for Li–O2 batteries with high current densities and preferable limited capacities

The development of power batteries with high specific energy and long cycle life has broad application prospects in the field of electrocatalysis. Li–O2 batteries are known as the most promising power batteries, in which the performance of the critical materials (cathode catalytic materials) directly determines various performance indices of Li–O2 batteries. The wolframite-type ABO4 catalysts can provide enough reactive active sites to improve catalytic activity for Li–O2 batteries because there are abundant valence changes of A and B elements. Here, NiMoO4 nanoflakes with a wolframite structure were used as the electrode materials in Li–O2 batteries, which were directly prepared on carbon cloth using the hydrothermal method. The first discharge capacities of the NiMoO4/carbon cloth electrodes reached 23600 mA h g-1 at a current density of 600 mA g-1 and 10726 mA h g-1 at a current density of 2000 mA g-1. The NiMoO4/carbon cloth electrodes exhibit stable performance for 100 cycles under a fixed limited capacity of 1000 mA h g-1 at current densities of 1000, 3000 and 5000 mA g-1. The above results illustrate that the synthesized NiMoO4 has good stable performance with extremely high current densities and preferable limited capacities in Li–O2 batteries.