UCLA’s 3D-Printed Zinc-Ion Battery Stores 7 Times More Energy

A UCLA-led research team has used 3D printing to build a porous carbon electrode that pushes a hybrid zinc-ion battery to store more than seven times the charge of comparable devices, while retaining 82% of that capacity after 1,500 charge cycles. The study, published in the journal Small, was led by co-corresponding authors Maher El-Kady and Ric Kaner along with first author Sophia Uemura.

A Honeycomb Electrode

The device combines two modes of energy storage in one hybrid cell. One terminal behaves like a conventional lithium-ion battery electrode. The other is a carbon electrode similar to what’s found in a supercapacitor, a technology that charges and discharges quickly and lasts for decades, but stores comparatively little energy because it can only hold charge on the surface of its electrodes.

To get around that limitation, the team 3D printed the carbon electrode with a honeycomb-like internal structure, using a resin that solidifies under UV laser light. After heating and gassing the printed structure to leave only conductive carbon riddled with open cavities, the researchers loaded it with vanadium oxide, a material with high energy storage capacity. The resulting surface area is large enough that a single gram, flattened out, would cover roughly ten tennis courts.