On the morning of July 8, the National Science and Technology Rewards Conference, the General Membership Conference of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the 11th National Congress of the China Association for Science and Technology were solemnly held at the Great Hall of the People. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, President of the State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, attended the conference, presented awards to the recipients of the State's Highest Science and Technology Award, and delivered an important speech.

The achievement of Researcher Zhang Xinbo's team at the Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CIAC, CAS) — "Performance Breakthroughs and New System Construction of Ultra-High Specific Energy Lithium–Air Batteries" — was awarded the Second Prize of the 2025 National Natural Science Award.

The research on "Performance Breakthroughs and New System Construction of Ultra-High Specific Energy Lithium–Air Batteries" has achieved a series of original results in discovering new phenomena, revealing new mechanisms, and constructing new systems, providing innovative solutions for the performance breakthrough of lithium–air batteries and achieving stable operation of ultra-high specific energy and flexible lithium–air battery devices in ambient air.

Based on this achievement, lithium–air batteries have been validated across multiple projects, and multiple representative papers have been published. The team was also invited to write reviews/commentaries in journals including Nature Reviews Chemistry, Nature Energy, Chemical Society Reviews, and Accounts of Chemical Research, exerting significant scientific influence internationally.

The team led the establishment of the first group standard for lithium–air batteries, and the achievement has received the Jilin Provincial Science and Technology Award (First Class), the Tencent Science Exploration Award, and other honors.