A freestanding vanadium nitride nanowire (VN-NW) membrane is employed as a carbon-free gas diffusion cathode (GDC) for high-performance Li–CO₂ batteries. Li–CO₂ cells built with the VN-NW GDC exhibit excellent electrochemical performance, achieving 100 discharge/charge cycles with an ultralow round-trip overpotential of <1 ​V. The VN-NW GDC also delivers vastly improved capacity and rate capability compared to a conventional multiwalled carbon nanotube GDC. The morphology of the discharge products (Li₂CO₃ ​+ ​C) is greatly improved with the VN-NW GDC compared to the carbon-based cathode, allowing for facile decomposition on charge. Furthermore, the absence of carbon in the VN-NW GDC allows for easy characterization of the discharge products with a variety of techniques, including transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The impressive performance of the hierarchically structured VN-NW GDC in Li–CO₂ batteries justifies further investigation into noble metal-free and carbon-free materials for gas diffusion cathodes.

独立式氮化钒纳米线（VN-NW）膜用作高性能Li–CO ₂电池的无碳气体扩散阴极（GDC）。使用VN-NW GDC构建的Li–CO ₂电池具有出色的电化学性能，实现了100次放电/充电循环，超低往返过电势<1V。与常规的多壁碳纳米管GDC相比，VN-NW GDC还提供了大大提高的容量和速率能力。放电产物（Li ₂ CO ₃ 与基于碳的阴极相比，VN-NW GDC大大提高了+ C），允许在充电时轻松分解。此外，VN-NW GDC中不存在碳，因此可以通过多种技术轻松表征放电产物，包括透射电子显微镜，X射线衍射和X射线光电子能谱。Li-CO ₂电池中分层结构的VN-NW GDC令人印象深刻的性能证明了进一步研究用于气体扩散阴极的无贵金属和无碳材料的合理性。