부산대학교 도서관

Zinc-air battery receives continuous attention as an environment-friendly energy storage device, whose potential commercialization is calling for alternative separators, as traditional ones (such as Celgard 5550) often require complex preparation and induce less competitive cost-effectiveness. Moreover, higher electrolyte-uptake is needed for the separators to extend the service life of the batteries. In this paper, separators based on hybrid PVA fibers are prepared through a facile wet-laid nonwoven process within just 25 min. The insoluble PVA fibers work as the skeleton, while the water soluble PVA fibers function as the adhesive in the prepared separators. Microstructure, pore distribution, and electrochemical performance of the wet-laid separators are measured. Results show that the wet-laid separators possess superior electrolyte wettability compared with commercial ones, sufficient porosity, as well as uniform sub-micron pore size distribution. Lower bulk resistance and charge–discharge polarization are achieved. The zinc-air batteries employing the wet-laid separators exhibit comparable cyclic performance with the commercial ones. The key to achieve the better performance of the separators are deemed to be the highly hydrophilic raw materials along with the proper porosity induced by the wet-laid method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]