A Significant Step Toward High-Capacity Energy Storage for Renewable Power
With the global push to shift away from fossil fuels, efficient energy storage solutions are essential to address the challenge of intermittent power supply that comes with renewables like solar. This calls for battery technologies that are stable, safe, and highly efficient.
In an exciting breakthrough, scientists from the Research Institute for Sustainable Energy (RISE), TCG CREST, and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) have developed a novel aqueous zinc-ion battery (AZIB) system that displays remarkable cell stability and charge storage efficiency.
Typically, zinc-ion batteries tend to have unstable electrodes due to pH variations and inhomogeneous zinc electrode stripping/plating. This new technology addresses these issues using a ‘redox non-innocent’ additive with hydrophilic and hydrophobic parts that participate in a ‘push–pull’ action with the electrons in the reaction, thereby regulating pH and reducing side reactions. (Non-innocent here means that its oxidative state during the reaction cannot be determined.)
This advancement could pave the way for safer, more efficient, high-capacity AZIBs, bringing us closer to a sustainable energy future.
Congratulations to the research team!
Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202404752
