With the ever-increasing demand for higher-performing energy-storage systems, electrocatalysis has become a major topic of interest in an attempt to enhance the electrochemical performance of many electrochemical technologies. Discoveries pertaining to the oxygen reduction reaction catalyst helped enable the commercialization of fuel-cell-based electric vehicles. However, a closely related technology, the metal-air battery, has yet to find commercial application. Much like the Li-ion battery, metal-air batteries can potentially utilize the electrical grid network for charging, bypassing the need for establishing a hydrogen infrastructure. Among the metal-air batteries, Li-air and Zn-air batteries have drawn much interest in the past decade. Unfortunately, state-of-the art metal-air batteries still produce performances that are well below practical levels. In this brief perspective, we hope to bridge some of the ideas from fuel cell to that of metal-air batteries with the aim of inspiring new ideas and directions for future research.

随着对高性能储能系统的不断增长的需求，电催化已经成为人们感兴趣的主要话题，以试图提高许多电化学技术的电化学性能。与氧还原反应催化剂有关的发现有助于使基于燃料电池的电动汽车商业化。然而，一种紧密相关的技术，金属空气电池，尚未找到商业应用。类似于锂离子电池，金属空气电池可以潜在地利用电网进行充电，而无需建立氢气基础设施。在过去的十年中，在金属空气电池中，锂空气和锌空气电池引起了极大的兴趣。不幸，最先进的金属空气电池仍具有远低于实际水平的性能。从这个简短的角度来看，我们希望将燃料电池与金属空气电池的一些想法联系起来，以期激发出新的想法和未来研究的方向。