Flexible high energy density zinc-ion batteries enabled by binder-free MnO2/reduced graphene oxide electrode

We demonstrate a rechargeable zinc-ion battery with high energy density and cyclability using MnO2 and reduced graphene oxide (MnO2/rGO) electrode. The flexible and binder free electrode, with high MnO2 mass ratio (80wt% of MnO2), is fabricated using vacuum filtration without any additional additives other than rGO. Compared to batteries with conventional MnO2 electrodes, the Zn-MnO2/rGO battery shows a significant enhanced capacity (332.2mAhg(-1) at 0.3Ag(-1)), improved rate capability (172.3mAhg(-1) at 6Ag(-1)) and cyclability. The capacity retention remains 96% after 500 charge/discharge cycles at 6Ag(-1). The high MnO2 mass ratio makes MnO2/rGO electrode advantageous when the capacity is normalized to the whole electrode, particularly at high rates. The calculated gravimetric energy density of Zn-MnO2/rGO battery is 33.17Whkg(-1), which is comparable to the existing commercial lead-acid batteries (30-40Wh kg(-1)). Furthermore, the discharge profile and capacity of our Zn-MnO2/rGO battery shows no deterioration during bending test, indicating good flexibility. As a result, zinc-ion battery is believed to be a promising technology for powering next generation flexible electronics. Zinc-ion batteries: a carbon based promoterSimple carbon materials are shown to modify the MnO2 electrodes and greatly enhance the capacity and cyclability for zinc-ion batteries. An international team led by Prof Hang Zhou from Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, China developed high performance flexible zinc-ion batteries with MnO2 and reduced graphene-oxide composites as the electrodes. The electrodes are prepared by vacuum filtering the suspension of the mixture of reduced graphene oxide and hydrothermal synthesized MnO2 nanosheets. The incorporation of reduced graphene oxide not only enhances the battery capacity by improving the conductivity and increasing the specific surface area, but also reduces the production cost by saving the trouble to use other binders or additives. Due to above advantages, this approach is competitive for wearable energy storage devices.