3D PRINTING OF ZINC ANODE STRUCTURES

Date and Time: 
Thursday, October 21, 2021 - 01:00pm
Location: 
F116 Discovery Park
Speaker: 
Stephen Adot Oyo Amoko
Affiliation: 
Masters Defense - Mechanical Engineering UNT
Abstract: 
Recently, 3D printing has received increasing attention for the fabrication and assembly of electrodes for batteries due to the freedom of creating structures in any shape or size, porosity, flexibility, stretchability, and chemistry. Particularly, Zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) are favored due to high safety, cheap materials cost, and high volumetric capacity (5,849 mAh/cm3), however, rapid evaporation of Zn due to low melting temperature has limited its 3D printability via conventional laser-based additive manufacturing technique. Here, we develop a printable ink for the fabrication of flexible and 3D printed Zn anode with varied surface areas using the Direct Ink Writing (DIW) method. Our 3D printed porous and high surface area Zn anode structures effectively suppressed the dendrite growth while providing high Zn ion diffusion towards the cathode to significantly enhance the performance of ZIB. By varying filament distancing and path, we 3D printed zinc anode structures with different active surface areas, surface area to volume ratio, porosity, and flexible structures that can be incorporated on any device. Carbon in the composite improved conductivity, and mechanical stability of 3D printed zinc anode. Our 3D printed composite anodes allowed flexible designing of batteries surpassing conventional battery designs such as coin cells or pouch cells and can be used to design printed energy storage systems.