Aprotic lithium-oxygen (Li-O 2 ) batteries show great promise in energy storage and transportation applications because of their high gravimetric energies, which potentially represent a several-fold increase over Li-ion batteries. The stable and reversible operation of Li-O 2 batteries, however, is currently hindered by the severe degradation of common electrolytes. Here, we show that sulfonamidebased electrolytes, designed on the basis of physical organic chemistry principles, can exhibit higher (electro)chemical stability than common electrolytes, such as tetraglyme and DMSO.