TY - JOUR
T1 - Utilization of hyper-dendritic zinc during high rate discharge in alkaline electrolytes
AU - Davies, Greg
AU - Hsieh, Andrew G.
AU - Hultmark, Marcus Nils
AU - Mueller, Michael Edward
AU - Steingart, Daniel A.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by NSF CBET 1318163, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and Princeton Environmental Institute Grand Challenges Fund, the Princeton Project X Fund, and the Princeton E-ffiliates Fund.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2016. Published by ECS.
PY - 2016
Y1 - 2016
N2 - Zinc is a low cost and abundant material, and its strong reducing potential combined with stability in aqueous solutions give it high energy density and safety. It is, therefore, known to be an excellent choice of anode for a wide range of battery designs. However, this material presents some challenges for use in a secondary battery, including morphology changes and dendrite growth during charge (Zn deposition), and low utilization during discharge (Zn dissolution). Low utilization is related to a combination of corrosion and passivation effects. In this paper, we demonstrate a hyper-dendritic (HD) zinc morphology that has a high surface area and allows for rapid discharge in a completely freestanding system with no binders or conductive additives, while still maintaining significantly higher utilization than typical zinc morphologies. At rates of 2.5 A/g, the HD zinc has a utilization level approximately 50% higher than typical zinc granules or dust. Furthermore, we demonstrate that, through tuning of the electrolyte with specific additives, we are able to further increase the utilization of the material at high rate discharge by up to 30%.
AB - Zinc is a low cost and abundant material, and its strong reducing potential combined with stability in aqueous solutions give it high energy density and safety. It is, therefore, known to be an excellent choice of anode for a wide range of battery designs. However, this material presents some challenges for use in a secondary battery, including morphology changes and dendrite growth during charge (Zn deposition), and low utilization during discharge (Zn dissolution). Low utilization is related to a combination of corrosion and passivation effects. In this paper, we demonstrate a hyper-dendritic (HD) zinc morphology that has a high surface area and allows for rapid discharge in a completely freestanding system with no binders or conductive additives, while still maintaining significantly higher utilization than typical zinc morphologies. At rates of 2.5 A/g, the HD zinc has a utilization level approximately 50% higher than typical zinc granules or dust. Furthermore, we demonstrate that, through tuning of the electrolyte with specific additives, we are able to further increase the utilization of the material at high rate discharge by up to 30%.
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U2 - 10.1149/2.0891607jes
DO - 10.1149/2.0891607jes
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85020271948
SN - 0013-4651
VL - 163
SP - A1340-A1347
JO - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
JF - Journal of the Electrochemical Society
IS - 7
ER -