New nickel-zinc battery or lithium-ion battery

Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in portable electronic products such as mobile phones and notebook computers. Despite its many advantages, the safety of lithium-ion batteries has always been criticized, causing consumer concerns. As a result, researchers from around the world are working to improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries or to find alternatives to lithium-ion batteries. A new study suggests that a new type of battery with zinc as the electrode is expected to replace lithium-ion batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries have accidents such as fires and explosions. The main reason is that lithium-ion batteries must use flammable organic solvents as electrolytes, while zinc-based batteries can use aqueous solutions as electrolytes, which greatly reduces battery fire. The risk, and the large reserves of zinc, the low cost, which is conducive to the promotion of zinc batteries. However, zinc batteries have rarely been used as batteries, and an important reason is that the battery charging process is difficult to control, so the battery performance is significantly reduced after repeated use.

Researchers from the US Naval Research Laboratory are determined to solve this problem from the perspective of improving electrode structure. Different from the traditional zinc electrode preparation method, they do not directly press the zinc powder into tablets, but make it into a porous sponge-like structure by an emulsion method. They then constructed a battery with this new structure as the anode and basic nickel oxide as the cathode. Tests show that the zinc oxidation and reduction process is more uniform during use, so the battery can maintain good performance after repeated charge and discharge cycles. Researchers hope that this new battery will one day replace lithium-ion batteries, making electronic products safer.