Ceramic Composite Gel Polymer Electrolyte for Aqueous Zinc-Ion Battery

Abstract

As the most extreme application of electrical energy storage devices, lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) not only have the high energy density, but also show long charge/discharge life cycles. Nevertheless, some inherent issues hinder its widespread application, such as the safety problems, lithium metal extrusion, dendrite growth, and the high cost, together with the limited resources of lithium metal. As one of the next-generation batteries, zinc-ion battery (ZIB) is a promising candidate to solve the above problems, due to their high theoretical capacity, low cost, high abundance, low potential, high energy density, and intrinsic safety. Three-types electrolytes, liquid-state, solid-state, and gel-state, are included in ZIBs. The aqueous ZIBs with liquid-state electrolytes are usually considered as ultra-intrinsic batteries. However, various side reactions of dendrite growth, oxygen evolution reaction, hydrogen evolution reaction, and metal Zn corrosion deteriorate the electrochemical reaction of ZIB.Herein, ceramic composite gel polymer electrolytes preparing by electrospinning process were applied to improve the electrochemical properties of ZIB. The gel polymer electrolytes containing amounts of aqueous liquid electrolytes have the activity of water, which can extend the electrochemical stability window and provide good flexibility and H+ insertion/extraction during charge/discharge process for high capacity and good cyclic stability.