\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHowever, there is a drawback to these environmentally friendly batteries. Metal-carbon-dioxide batteries have a slow reaction to kinetics, causing large over-potential, low energy efficiency, poor reversibility, and limited cycling stability.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nChallenges in modifying traditional catalysts<\/h3>\n
Dr Fan Zhanxi<\/span>, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at CityU, and one of the leaders of the study, stated: \u201cResearchers commonly consider morphology, size, constituents, and distribution of metal-based components in composite cathode catalysts to be the main concerns that lead to differences in battery performance.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cBut we found preparing novel catalysts with unconventional phases to be a feasible and promising strategy to boost the energy efficiency and performance of metal-gas batteries, especially since traditional modification strategies for catalysts have encountered long-term technical hurdles.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe team\u2019s extensive knowledge of the regulation of the crystal phase of metal-based nanomaterials allowed them to select suitable elements to construct their unconventional phases. From this, they were able to study the effect of the crystal phase of catalysts on the reaction kinetics of a certain kind of aprotic metal-gas electrochemistry.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDr Fan explained: \u201cHowever, this does not mean that this process is easy to realise, because it involves strict requirements on the bifunctionality of cathode catalysts in an organic environment.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDr Fan and his team fused iridium nanostructures with an unconventional 4H\/face-centred cubic heterophase by regulating the growth kinetics of iridium on gold templates. The results from the study showed that the catalyst with 4H\/fcc heterophase had a lower charge plateau and higher energy efficiency during cycling in the environmentally friendly, aprotic Li-CO<\/span>2<\/span>\u202fbatteries, compared to other metal-based catalysts.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nImproving battery performance with unconventional phase metal nanomaterials<\/h3>\n
The team conducted a combination of experiments and theoretical calculations which revealed that 4H\/fcc Ir nanostructures, created through phase engineering, lower the overpotential of the environmentally friendly batteries and promote the cycling stability of electrochemical redox reactions. This is because the created nanostructures are more favourable for the reversible formation of amorphous\/low-crystalline discharge products. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe new nanostructures had a better performance than traditional catalysts used in battery technology, and were able to achieve outstanding charge potential and energy efficiency compared to other reported metal-based catalysts used in aprotic Li-CO<\/span>2<\/span>\u202fbatteries.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDr Fan concluded: \u201cThis study reveals the great potential of phase engineering of catalysts in metal-gas electrochemistry. It opens up a new direction to design catalysts for developing sustainable electrochemical energy conversion and storage systems.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers have improved the performance of environmentally friendly batteries using catalysts with unconventional phase nanostructures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":26246,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24204],"tags":[649,24161],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
Nanomaterials boost performance of environmentally friendly batteries<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n