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Title: Stackable bipolar pouch cells with corrosion-resistant current collectors enable high-power aqueous electrochemical energy storage

Journal Article · · Energy & Environmental Science
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/c8ee00546j · OSTI ID:1613572
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3];  [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [2]
  1. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States); DOE/OSTI
  2. Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
  3. Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
  4. Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, OR (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

A critical bottleneck in the development of aqueous electrochemical energy storage systems is the lack of viable complete cell designs. Here, we report a metal-free, bipolar pouch cell designed with carbon black/polyethylene composite film (CBPE) current collectors as a practical cell architecture. The light-weight, corrosion-resistant CBPE provides stable operation in a variety of aqueous electrolytes over a ~2.5 V potential range. Because CBPE is heat-sealable, it serves simultaneously as both the pouch cell packaging and seal in addition to its use as a current collector. Although this non-metallic composite has a low electrical conductivity relative to metal foils, current travels only a short distance in the through-plane direction of the current collector in the bipolar cell configuration. This shorter path length lowers the effective electrical resistance, making the design suitable for high-power applications. We test the cell architecture using an aqueous ZnBr2 battery chemistry and incorporate tetrabutylammonium cations to improve the intrinsic low Coulombic efficiency and fast self-discharge of non-flow ZnBr2 cells. These devices demonstrate a cell-level energy density of 50 W h L-1 at a 10C rate (0.5 kW L-1), with less than 1% capacity loss over 500 cycles. A large-area (>6 cm2) 4-cell stack is built to illustrate that the pouch cells are scalable to practical dimensions and stackable without sacrificing performance. The device operates in the range of 6–7 V and has an internal self-balancing mechanism that prevents any individual cell in the stack from overcharging. The results thus demonstrate both a conceptually new cell architecture that is broadly applicable to many aqueous electrolyte chemistries and a specific high-performance example thereof.

Research Organization:
Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); USDOE Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E)
Grant/Contract Number:
AR0000344
OSTI ID:
1613572
Journal Information:
Energy & Environmental Science, Journal Name: Energy & Environmental Science Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 11; ISSN 1754-5692
Publisher:
Royal Society of ChemistryCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Cited By (3)

Interfacial Super‐Assembled Porous CeO 2 /C Frameworks Featuring Efficient and Sensitive Decomposing Li 2 O 2 for Smart Li–O 2 Batteries journal September 2019
A Dual Plating Battery with the Iodine/[ZnI x (OH 2 ) 4− x ] 2− x Cathode journal September 2019
Optimization and Design of the Minimal Architecture Zinc-Bromine Battery Using Insight from a Levelized Cost of Storage Model journal January 2018

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