Aqueous proton batteries are regarded as one of the most promising energy technologies for next-generation grid storage due to the distinctive merits of H+ charge carriers with small ionic radius and light weight. Various materials have been explored for aqueous proton batteries; however, their full batteries show undesirable electrochemical performance with limited rate capability and cycling stability. Here we introduce a novel aqueous proton full battery that shows remarkable rate capability, cycling stability, and ultralow temperature performance, which is driven by a hydrogen gas anode and a Prussian blue analogue cathode in a concentrated phosphoric acid electrolyte. Its operation involves hydrogen evolution/oxidation redox reactions on the anode and H+ insertion/extraction reactions on the cathode, in parallel with the ideal transfer of only H+ between these two electrodes. The fabricated aqueous hydrogen gas–proton battery exhibits an unprecedented charge/discharge capability of up to 960 C with a superior power density of 36.5 kW kg–1, along with an ultralong cycle life of over 0.35 million cycles. Furthermore, this hydrogen gas–proton battery is able to work well at an ultralow temperature of −80 °C with 54% of its room-temperature capacity and under −60 °C with a stable cycle life of 1150 cycles. This work provides new opportunities to construct aqueous proton batteries with high performance in extreme conditions for large-scale energy storage.
The development of Zn-free anodes to inhibit Zn dendrite formation and modulate high-capacity Zn batteries is highly applauded yet very challenging. Here, we design a robust two-dimensional antimony/antimony-zinc alloy heterostructured interface to regulate Zn plating. Benefiting from the stronger adsorption and homogeneous electric field distribution of the Sb/Sb2Zn3-heterostructured interface in Zn plating, the Zn anode enables an ultrahigh areal capacity of 200 mAh cm−2 with an overpotential of 112 mV and a Coulombic efficiency of 98.5%. An anode-free Zn-Br2 battery using the Sb/Sb2Zn3-heterostructured interface@Cu anode shows an attractive energy density of 274 Wh kg−1 with a practical pouch cell energy density of 62 Wh kg−1. The scaled-up Zn-Br2 battery in a capacity of 500 mAh exhibits over 400 stable cycles. Further, the Zn-Br2 battery module in an energy of 9 Wh (6 V, 1.5 Ah) is integrated with a photovoltaic panel to demonstrate the practical renewable energy storage capabilities. Our superior anode-free Zn batteries enabled by the heterostructured interface enlighten an arena towards large-scale energy storage applications.
Conventional electric double-layer capacitors are energy storage devices with a high specific power and extended cycle life. However, the low energy content of this class of devices acts as a stumbling block to widespread adoption in the energy storage field. To circumvent the low-energy drawback of electric double-layer capacitors, here we report the assembly and testing of a hybrid device called electrocatalytic hydrogen gas capacitor containing a hydrogen gas negative electrode and a carbon-based positive electrode. This device operates using pH-universal aqueous electrolyte solutions (i.e., from 0 to 14) in a wide temperature range (i.e., from − 70 °C to 60 °C). In particular, we report specific energy and power of 45 Wh kg−1 and 458 W kg−1 (both values based on the electrodes’ active materials mass), respectively, at 1 A g−1 and 25 °C with 9 M H3PO4 electrolyte solution. The device also enables capacitance retention of 85% (final capacitance of about 114 F g−1) after 100,000 cycles at 10 A g−1 and 25 °C with 1 M phosphate buffer electrolyte solution.
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