Photo‐Assisted Metal‐Air Batteries: Recent Progress, Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract To meet the need of high energy density, long durability, safe and cost‐efficient energy conversion and storage devices, metal‐air batteries like Li−O2 and Zn−O2 batteries have received enormous attention and were subject to exciting development in the past decade. Photo‐assisted strategies that enable the effective combination of photo/electric energy conversion/storage render a new dimension for the conventional metal‐air batteries techniques with mere electric energy utilization. Therefore, tremendous research is ongoing in search of more efficient and durable devices with photo‐assisted strategies. This review provides an overview of photo‐assisted Li−O2 batteries, Zn−O2 batteries, and batteries with various metal/air components. The working mechanism, the basic device architecture and practical performances of various photo‐assisted systems are summarized and discussed. Furthermore, certain technical challenges and future opportunities for the photo‐assisted metal air batteries are emphasized and discussed in the hope of stimulating further research.