Scientists from Australia and Singapore recently reported that they have developed a new type of catalyst that is expected to significantly improve the performance and application range of rechargeable zinc-air batteries.
Enhancing the performance of rechargeable batteries is an important challenge in the era of mobile intelligence. Currently, lithium is widely used in rechargeable batteries. Lithium's reserves on the earth are relatively small, and its ability to store electricity is limited and there is a greater environmental risk.
Zinc-air batteries are an alternative candidate for lithium batteries. Metal zinc reacts with oxygen in the air to produce electricity. It is currently used in hearing aids, film cameras, and railway signaling devices. However, this kind of battery lacks high performance bifunctional oxygen electrode catalyst for a long time, and can only use expensive noble metals such as platinum and rhodium as electrode catalyst, which limits its market competitiveness.
Researchers reported in the latest issue of the US “Advanced Materials†magazine that the new catalysts they developed were crystallized from metal oxides such as iron, cobalt, and nickel, which can catalyze both types of reactions at the same time. In the tests, zinc-air batteries using the new catalyst showed good performance. After completing 60 charge-discharge cycles of 120 hours, the battery efficiency was reduced by less than 10%.
Professor Chen Yuan, professor of engineering and information technology at the University of Sydney, Australia, said in an email interview with Xinhua News Agency reporter: “The breakthrough point of our research is to pass a series of double metal oxides composed of elements such as iron, cobalt and nickel. Simultaneous control of composition, size, and crystallinity at the nanoscale significantly increases the performance of this type of dual-function oxygen electrode catalyst."
Chen Yuan said that the research team is working to solve the basic technical problems still exist in zinc-air batteries, so that the battery can be put into practical use as soon as possible.
According to a news bulletin issued by the University of Sydney, this achievement has broken through the bottleneck of zinc-air battery electrode catalysts, making it possible for zinc-air batteries to be widely used in electronic products. Global zinc content is rich, the price is relatively cheap. The storage capacity of zinc-air batteries can theoretically be more than 5 times that of traditional lithium batteries, and it is safer and more environmentally friendly. (He Jiayue Li Qianying)
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