A General Method for Regenerating Catalytic Electrodes

Catalytic electrodes play an indispensable role in electrochemical devices. As the pursuit of high activity dominates the research focus, limited attention was paid to the recycling technologies. Existing methods often only allow for recovering specific metallic substance without restoring the functionality of the electrode. Herein, we report a general, non-destructive method based on high-temperature pulse annealing to enable direct reuse of catalytic electrodes. The high temperature ensures complete decomposition of byproducts; meanwhile, the rapid annealing maintains the original physio-chemical property, and thus the performance of the catalyst. Using the Li-air battery as a model system, we can regenerate a Ru-loaded electrode for 10 times after each cycling operation, thus extending its lifetime by nearly 10 folds. Our method can be readily applied to other electrochemical systems where catalytic electrodes are prone to deactivation by byproducts. This study paves a new way toward highly sustainable operation of electrochemical devices.