Improvement of Zinc Anode for Flexible Printed Zinc Air Batteries with High Energy Density

Abstract

Zinc-air batteries are potential energy storage devices because of their cost-effectiveness and high energy density. In this work, flexible zinc-air batteries were fabricated using an inexpensive screen-printing technique. The anode and cathode current collectors were printed using commercial nanosilver conductive ink on a polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate and a polypropylene (PP) membrane, respectively. Air cathode made of blended activated carbon with MnO 2 , was fabricated. Anode electrodes were fabricated by using formulations consisting of zinc and activated carbon in sodium silicate. The effects of the micro-structure of the anode electrodes and their electrochemical characterizations were investigated. In addition, the effects of composition of the activated carbon and zinc on the performances of the battery were also investigated. The optimal formulation was identified. The results also showed that highly porous anode electrode leads to the batteries with high power density. Moreover, silicate binders performed better than other binders. Finally, the batteries were tested for their flexibility by bending them so that their length decreased from 100% to 50%. The results showed that the bending did not affect characteristics on potential voltage and discharging time of the batteries.