A self-healing neutral aqueous rechargeable Zn/MnO2 battery based on modified carbon nanotubes substrate cathode

Hao Chen; Haizhu Kuang; Fan Liu; Yuanke Wu; Shinan Cai; Maowen Xu; Shu-Juan Bao

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2021.04.097

A self-healing neutral aqueous rechargeable Zn/MnO₂ battery based on modified carbon nanotubes substrate cathode

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2021 Oct 15:600:83-89. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.04.097. Epub 2021 Apr 21.

Authors

Hao Chen¹, Haizhu Kuang², Fan Liu¹, Yuanke Wu¹, Shinan Cai¹, Maowen Xu³, Shu-Juan Bao⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Clean Energy & Advanced Materials, School of Materials and Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China.
² Department of Pharmacy, The Third Affiliated Hospital (The Affiliated Luohu Hospital) of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China.
³ Institute for Clean Energy & Advanced Materials, School of Materials and Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China. Electronic address: xumaowen@swu.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute for Clean Energy & Advanced Materials, School of Materials and Energy, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, PR China. Electronic address: baoshj@swu.edu.cn.

PMID: 34004432
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.04.097

Abstract

Rechargeable aqueous Zn/MnO₂ batteries show great potential for grid-scale storage due to their low cost, high safety, and energy density, yet suffer from continuous capacity decay during operation. Therefore, this work proposes a capacity self-healing aqueous Zn/MnO₂ (Zn/cCNTs-MnO₂) battery using carboxyl-modified carbon nanotubes (cCNTs) as the cathode substrate, ZnSO₄ + MnSO₄ mixed aqueous solution as the electrolyte, and Zn foil as the anode. Based on the controllable electrodeposition reaction of MnO₂, the specific capacity of Zn/cCNTs-MnO₂ batteries can be achieved or recovered by operating several cycles under a low current density (0.1 mA cm^-2). Then, the batteries can stably perform under a high current density (1 mA cm^-2). By repeating the above steps, a capacity self-healing usage scheme was established, which can significantly improve the cycling performance of Zn/cCNTs-MnO₂ batteries. Moreover, the results of the proposed Zn/cCNTs-MnO₂ batteries verify the MnO₂ electrodeposition mechanism and introduce a novel method for the development of durable aqueous rechargeable Zn/MnO₂ batteries.

Keywords: Aqueous Zn/MnO(2) batteries; Carboxyl-modified carbon nanotubes cathode substrate; Deposition-dissolution mechanism; Self-healing specific capacity.