Operando Visualization and Multi-scale Tomography Studies of Dendrite Formation and Dissolution in Zinc Batteries

Abstract

This work emphasizes the importance of understanding the phenomena of dendrite formation occurring in rechargeable metal batteries. These batteries can reach quite a high specific energy but have inherently short life due to dendritic growth. The current work implements different tomographic methods to visualize dendritic growth in real time and to quantify various dendrite characteristics at submicron and nanoscale levels. The methodology presented here can be also extended to study the growth of other metal dendrites in aqueous and nonaqueous batteries.

Do Zinc Dendrites Exist in Neutral Zinc Batteries: A Developed Electrohealing Strategy to In Situ Rescue In‐Service Batteries

“…This decayed cycling performance is attributed to the internal short circuit as symbolized by the sharp decrease of voltage hysteresis . A sudden fluctuation happens after 4 h and rapidly ran well again in Figure c is attributed to the transient change of the circumstance, which has been also reported in previous works . Even worse, this dissatisfactory lifespan further decreased to only ≈2.1 and 1.2 h when elevating the current densities to 7.5 and 10 mA cm −2 (Figure d,e).…”

Wearable Textile‐Based Co−Zn Alkaline Microbattery with High Energy Density and Excellent Reliability

“…The Zn dendrite attributed from the inhomogeneous distribution of current, nonuniform flow and restricted mass transport will result in the poor cycle life, even internal shorting. [ 19 ] Compared with Zn plates, Zn anodes with a 3D skeleton could provide faster ion diffusion, more reactive sites, and more uniform charge distribution. [ 3b,4b ] Thus, a Zn@CC anode with a 3D porous network was synthesized via a facile electrodeposition process.…”

“…The dendrites grow larger when there is the higher local current density. [ 19 ] Figure S13a, Supporting Information, shows a conventional in‐plane Co−Zn microbattery with a Zn plate as the anode. During charge−discharge process, the electric field distribution is mainly concentrated in the gap area (Figure S14a, Supporting Information).…”

Lamella-nanostructured eutectic zinc–aluminum alloys as reversible and dendrite-free anodes for aqueous rechargeable batteries

“…This has prompted the recent renaissance of AR-ZIBs 4,7,8 , with the development of various cathode materials including polymorphous manganese dioxides [9][10][11][12][13] , vanadium oxides [14][15][16][17][18][19] , Prussian blue analogues (PBAs) 20,21 and quinone analogs 22 for hosting/delivering Zn 2+ and/or H + via insertion/extraction or chemical conversion reactions [23][24][25] . However, no matter which advanced material is employed as the cathode, state-of-the-art AR-ZIBs are persistently plagued by the irreversibility issues of traditional metallic Zn anode 5,6,8,26 , such as dendrite formation and growth 5,6,8,27,28 and low coulombic efficiency (CE) associated with side reactions (e.g., hydrogen evolution, corrosion, and by-product formation) during the stripping/plating processes [29][30][31] . Although the Zn dendrite formation could be effectively alleviated in neutral electrolytes compared with in alkaline solutions [7][8][9] , it is inherently unavoidable because of the unique metallurgic characteristics of monometallic Zn 27,31 .…”