The lithium-air battery, Li-air for short, is a metal-air battery chemistry that uses the oxidation of lithium at the anode and reduction of oxygen at the cathode to induce a current flow. Originally proposed in the 1970s as a possible power source for electric vehicles, Li-air batteries recaptured scientific interest in the late 2000s due to advances in materials technology and an increasing demand for environmentally safe and oil-independent energy sources. The major appeal of the Li-air battery is the extremely high specific energy, a measure of the amount of energy a battery can store for a given weight. A lithium-air battery has an energy density (per kilo) comparable to gasoline per kilo. Li-air batteries gain this advantage in specific energy since they use oxygen from the air instead of storing an oxidizer internally. The Li-Air battery is still in the research and development phase.
Applications: short-term storage, arbitrage, distributed/off-grid storage, frequency or voltage regulation, mobility