Highly conductive current collector for enhancing conductivity and power supply of flexible thin-film Zn–MnO2 battery

Abstract

The present work optimizes factors to improve conductivity of carbon current collector for industrial application to flexible thin-film primary zinc-manganese dioxide battery. The investigated factors are ratio of carbon ingredients, current collector thickness, and silver coating. The performance of the zinc-manganese dioxide batteries assembling from the investigated current collectors were thoroughly analyzed with potentiostatic electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and galvanostatic discharge to understand the effect of these modifications for practical application. The cell impedance is mitigated when applying more fraction of the commercial carbon ‘A’, double thickness and silver coating. The discharge capacity of the battery is favored by carbon ‘A’ and silver coating. The results show the optimal design of the current collector determined as a 1:1 wt ratio of the commercial ‘C’ and ‘A’ carbon inks, a double thickness of carbon current collector and coating silver on the terminals. This design offers highly conductive current collectors and good discharge capacity for the flexible batteries. The investigation has promising findings for more advanced designs to manufacture flexible batteries.