Owing to large specific surface area, high electronical conductivity and low mass, carbon materials have been widely used as cathode for non-aqueous lithium-oxygen (Li-O-2) batteries. However, carbon cathodes usually present poor catalytic activities toward oxygen reduction and evolution reactions (ORR and OER), resulting in a large charge over-potential and a short cycling life. In this work, a non-aqueous Li-O-2 battery with a bifunctional catalyst, ruthenium dioxide (RuO2)-decorated carbonized tubular polypyrrole, is reported. Compared with conventional catalysts, the bifunctional catalyst has two special features: i), a high content of graphitic N, and ii), a large number of RuO2 nanoparticles. The battery with the novel bifunctional catalyst shows a large discharge capacity (10095 mAh g(-1) at a current density of 200 mA g(-1)), a high rate capacity (6758 mAh g(-1) at a current density of 1000 mA g(-1)) and a long cycling life (55 cycles at the current density of 500 mA g(-1)). In addition, at the first cycle with a fixed capacity of 1000 mAh g(-1), the discharge and charge over-potentials are only 0.28 and 0.78 V, which are 180 and 360 mV lower than those of the batteries fitted with pristine carbonized tubular polypyrrole cathode. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.