Deeply Reconstructed Hierarchical Ni-Co Microwire for Flexible Ni-Zn Microbattery with Excellent Comprehensive Performance.

Abstract

The rise of flexible electronics calls for efficient microbatteries (MBs) with requirements in energy/power density, stability, and flexibility simultaneously. However, the ever-reported flexible MBs only display progress around certain aspects of energy loading, reaction rate, and electrochemical stability, and it remains challenging to develop a micro-power source with excellent comprehensive performance. Herein, a reconstructed hierarchical Ni-Co alloy microwire is designed to construct flexible Ni-Zn MB. Notably, the interwoven microwires network is directly formed during the synthesis process, and can be utilized as a potential microelectrode which well avoids the toxic additives and the tedious traditional powder process, thus greatly simplifying the manufacture of MB. Meanwhile, the hierarchical alloy microwire is composed of spiny nanostructures and highly active alloy sites, which contributes to deep reconstruction (≈100nm). Benefiting from the dense self-assembled structure, the fabricated Ni-Zn MB obtained high volumetric/areal energy density (419.7mWhcm-3 , 1.3mWhcm-2 ), and ultrahigh rate performance extending the power density to 109.4Wcm-3 (328.3mWcm-2 ). More surprisingly, the MB assembled by this inherently flexible microwire network is extremely resistant to bending/twisting. Therefore, this novel concept of excellent comprehensive micro-power source will greatly hold great implications for next-generation flexible electronics.