An advanced zinc air battery with nanostructured superwetting electrodes

Rechargeable zinc air batteries (ZABs) have gained considerable attention as a promising energy technique recently owing to their high theoretical energy and power density, safety and economic viability; however, the state-of-art ZABs have been plagued by two major drawbacks, unsatisfying achievable power density and low voltage efficiency. Our superwetting electrodes are hereby designed to circumvent these issues through controlling the O-2 bubbles adsorption/evolution behavior at electrode surface while maintaining the outstanding electrocatalysis performance. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time the application of superwetting catalytic electrodes in the tri-electrode rechargeable ZABs. Two different functional electrodes, namely superaerophilic cobalt-incorporated nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes hybrid catalyst and super-aerophobic NiFe-layered double hydroxide arrays, serve as exceptional catalysts for discharging and charging process respectively, thus achieving superior battery performance. The low-cost superwetting cathode pairs even exhibit a much better catalytic activity and durability than the combination of precious Pt/C and Ir/C catalysts. The as-assembled ZABs deliver a greatly improved peak power current of 245 mW cm(-2) at 396 mA cm(-2) over that of the ZABs composed of precious metal electrodes (186 mW cm(-2)), together with small polarization, high reversibility, and stability over long cycles. The design of superwetting electrode marks a general and effective strategy to achieve high-performance rechargeable ZABs.