• Paper

    Bunshi Fugetsu, Project Professor
    Ichiro Sakata, Professor, Graduate School of Engineering

A research paper from Project Prof. Bunshi Fugetsu’s group published at “Journal of Materials Chemistry A”

Today, with the expansion of photovoltaic and wind power generation, which have large fluctuations in power generation, low-cost stationary batteries for smart grids to store this power, and the construction of storage stations using these batteries, have become important social issues.

With respect to this issue, the zinc/manganese rechargeable battery is expected to be the most suitable battery for large-capacity energy storage. The zinc/manganese rechargeable battery is a battery that uses metallic zinc as the anode active material, manganese oxide as the cathode active material, and aqueous solutions of zinc sulfate and manganese sulfate as the electrolyte. Both zinc and manganese are abundant in the earth, and unlike lithium-ion batteries, no resource constraints exist. They are also less expensive and safer than lithium-ion batteries. The prototype of this zinc/manganese rechargeable battery was reported in 1988. However, the storage/discharge principle related to this battery has not yet been fully elucidated.

Dr. Wei Gong, Project Professor Bunshi Fugetsu and Professor Ichiro Sakata, and their colleagues clarified the storage/discharge principle of this zinc/manganese rechargeable battery and developed a technology to significantly improve the energy density and charge-discharge cycle durability of the battery by inserting manganese oxide and zinc metal in carbon nanotube networks.

The results of this research were published on July 6, 2022 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry.
(Image provided by Shinichiro Kinoshita)

Research title:


Electrochemistry of rechargeable aqueous zinc/zinc-sulphate/manganese-oxide batteries and method for preparation of high-performance cathodes.

Joint Researchers:


Wei Gong, Bunshi Fugetsu, Wei Mao, Adavan Kiliyankil Vipin, Ichiro Sakata、Lei Su, Xueji Zhang & Morinobu Endo

Journal:


Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2022
DOI: 10.1039/d2ta03729g
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/ta/d2ta03729g/unauth