Avoiding short circuits from zinc metal dendrites in anode by backside-plating configuration

Portable power sources and grid-scale storage both require batteries combining high energy density and low cost. Zinc metal battery systems are attractive due to the low cost of zinc and its high charge-storage capacity. However, under repeated plating and stripping, zinc metal anodes undergo a well...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Higashi, Shougo, Lee, Seok Woo, Lee, Jang Soo, Takechi, Kensuke, Cui, Yi
Other Authors: School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/89823
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/47159
Description
Summary:Portable power sources and grid-scale storage both require batteries combining high energy density and low cost. Zinc metal battery systems are attractive due to the low cost of zinc and its high charge-storage capacity. However, under repeated plating and stripping, zinc metal anodes undergo a well-known problem, zinc dendrite formation, causing internal shorting. Here we show a backside-plating configuration that enables long-term cycling of zinc metal batteries without shorting. We demonstrate 800 stable cycles of nickel–zinc batteries with good power rate (20 mA cm−2, 20 C rate for our anodes). Such a backside-plating method can be applied to not only zinc metal systems but also other metal-based electrodes suffering from internal short circuits.