Chitosan derived carbon membranes as protective layers on zinc anodes for aqueous zinc batteries

Abstract

Aqueous zinc batteries with low cost and inherent safety are considered to be the most promising energy storage devices. However, they suffer from poor cycling stability and low coulombic efficiencies caused by the adverse zinc dendrites on the anodes during the discharging/charging processes. Chitosan is a kind of natural amino polysaccharide, which is rich in nitrogen and carbon. When sintered at high temperatures, carbon membranes have been achieved with excellent conductivity and graphitization degree, which could enhance the ability to induce zinc ion uniform deposition to some extent. In this work, a type of carbon membrane using chitosan as raw materials has been fabricated by sintering, and then assembled as the protect layers in aqueous zinc batteries. The results show that the samples could retain smoother surfaces when adopting the sintering temperature of 800°C, and the assembled batteries are able to achieve about 700 h at a current density of 0.25 mA·cm⁻², which is far longer than those of the similar batteries without any carbon membranes.

Keywords

carbon membrane / dendrites / chitosan / sintering process / zinc batteries

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