(670b) Reversibility of Zinc Metal Anode: Fundamentals and Engineering

Zinc metal anode provides 3 times the volumetric capacity of Li metal anode, and is compatible with non-flammable aqueous electrolyte. Indeed, primary zinc-air batteries have about the same volumetric energy density of Li-S battery (3 times the one of LiCoO2/graphite combination), and have long been used for electronic devices requiring extremely high energy density (e.g. hearing aid). However, rechargeable zinc-air batteries have not been successful, limiting their applications in larger markets such as cell phones, laptops, and electric vehicles. In this presentation, I will talk about our effort towards making reversible zinc-air battery, as a new research group at Georgia Tech. We find the main hurdle to reversibility lies in the zinc anode side. We developed in situ microscopy to understand the fundamental reason for irreversibility, and designed nanostructured zinc anode to overcome these challenges.