Photoinduced Oxygen Reduction Reaction Boosts the Output Voltage of a Zinc-Air Battery

Dongdong Zhu; Qiancheng Zhao; Guilan Fan; Shuo Zhao; Liubin Wang; Fujun Li; Jun Chen

doi:10.1002/anie.201905954

Photoinduced Oxygen Reduction Reaction Boosts the Output Voltage of a Zinc-Air Battery

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2019 Sep 2;58(36):12460-12464. doi: 10.1002/anie.201905954. Epub 2019 Aug 1.

Authors

Dongdong Zhu¹, Qiancheng Zhao¹, Guilan Fan¹, Shuo Zhao¹, Liubin Wang¹, Fujun Li¹, Jun Chen¹

Affiliation

¹ Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education), Renewable Energy Conversion and Storage Center (RECAST), College of Chemistry, Nankai University, Tianjin, 300071, China.

PMID: 31273902
DOI: 10.1002/anie.201905954

Abstract

Utilization of solar energy is of great interest for a sustainable society, and its conversion into electricity in a compact battery is challenging. Herein, a zinc-air battery with the polymer semiconductor polytrithiophene (pTTh) as the cathode is reported for direct conversion of photoenergy into electric energy. Upon irradiation, photoelectrons are generated in the conduction band (CB) of pTTh and then injected into the π_2p * orbitals of O₂ for its reduction to HO₂ ^- , which is disproportionated to OH^- and drives the oxidation of Zn to ZnO at the anode. The discharge voltage was significantly increased to 1.78 V without decay during discharge-charge cycles over 64 h, which corresponds to an energy density increase of 29.0 % as compared to 1.38 V for a zinc-air battery with state-of-the-art Pt/C. The zinc-air battery with an intrinsically different reaction scheme for simultaneous conversion of chemical and photoenergy into electric energy opens a new pathway for utilization of solar energy.

Keywords: energy density; output voltage; oxygen reduction reaction; photoelectrons; zinc-air batteries.