Enhanced High Efficiency Zinc-Air Batteries

Zinc-air batteries (ZABs) consist of cells that use metallic zinc as the anode, atmospheric oxygen as the cathode and water‑based electrolytes. These batteries have a large appeal due to their low-cost production, sustainable approach (less reliance on rare/toxic metals), and solution for large-scale and slow-cycle energy storage. However, ZABs tend to have a lower round-trip energy efficiency (about 60%) primarily due to the lack of effective catalysts for the sluggish oxygen reduction and oxygen evolution reactions and loss at the Zn electrode, which results in a high charge-discharge voltage gap.

 

Professor Zhaoyang Fan at Arizona State University has designed an advanced zinc-air battery architecture which increases open-circuit voltage (VOC), reduces overpotentials with an anode-cathode decoupled architecture, an advanced air electrode, and a novel catalyst. This novel architecture, new electrode design and new advanced catalyst materials can increase VOC from ~1.65 V to over 2.2 V and help ZAB technology move closer to practical, large-scale applications.

 

This novel battery architecture could help position ZABs as a low-cost, fire-safe, and sustainable solution for large-scale and slow-cycle clean energy storage, particularly for supporting grid stability and renewable energy integration.

 

 

For more information about this opportunity, please see