Study On Electrolyte of Low Temperature Zinc-Ion Batteries

Abstract

With the development of science and technology, now the comprehensive use of electronic equipment, has led to the increasing demand for energy storage systems. The market requires high-performance energy storage systems, zinc-ion batteries have the merits of good energy storage performance, low cost, and high safety, thus arousing extensive attention. Because of the diversity of the environment on the earth, the aqueous zinc ion batteries should meet the requirement of sustainability and feasibility working in wide temperature environments. How to ensure that zinc-ion batteries can work in such a harsh environment has become a research topic nowadays. As the ambient temperature decreases, the energy storage performance decays, including greatly reduced cycling life, increased resistance, and inferior charge/discharge performance. Especially below zero, the electrolyte may be frozen. Therefore, the application of aqueous zinc-ion batteries in these low-temperature environments has become a further research direction. To enhance the low-temperature performance of zinc-ion batteries, many strategies have been developed, such as improving the performance of the positive and negative electrodes, optimizing the electrolyte material, and developing separators. Among them, optimizing the electrolyte is the most effective strategy. Electrolyte is an important part of the battery, which contacts with the positive and negative stages of the battery and produces chemical reactions to produce electricity. In the process of charge and discharge, the electrolyte is mainly used for mass transportation, so the electrolyte is particularly important for enhancing low-temperature performance for zinc-ion batteries. Correspondingly, many researchers focus on designing and synthesizing advanced electrolytes. This paper summarizes the state-of-art development of low-temperature zinc-ion batteries domestically and internationally and classifies and analyzes the solid, liquid, and gel electrolytes.