Issue 14, 2024

Self-charging aqueous hydrogen gas batteries

Abstract

Self-charging aqueous metal-based batteries are attracting extensive attention for use in energy conversion and storage technologies. However, they are constrained to the chemically self-charging mode by oxygen gas (O2) reactants and suffer from serious battery failure after cycling due to the accumulation of solid byproducts on the electrodes. Herein, we report a universal approach to develop self-charging aqueous hydrogen gas (H2) batteries (SCAHGBs) with three different working modes, i.e., chemically self-charging, short-circuit induced self-charging, and low-energy-input triggered quasi-self-charging. The SCAHGBs can be self-recharged by the spontaneous chemical reaction between the discharged cathode and O2 reactants or the electrochemical reaction between the discharged cathode and electrocatalytic O2 electrode. Notably, the SCAHGBs after self-charge/discharge cycles only involve the generation of clean water by the combination of OH− and H+ ions, which can completely avoid the generation of solid byproducts thus guaranteeing excellent cycling stability with high-capacity retention of 90–100%. Interestingly, the self-charging capacity of the short-circuit induced self-charging battery can reach the practical capacity of 76% in only 15 min, and the low-energy-input triggered quasi-self-charging battery can achieve a high output voltage of 1.69 V. This work provides promising strategies for designing advanced self-charging battery systems.

Graphical abstract: Self-charging aqueous hydrogen gas batteries

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
14 Nov 2023
Accepted
02 Apr 2024
First published
10 Apr 2024

Energy Environ. Sci., 2024,17, 5013-5023

Self-charging aqueous hydrogen gas batteries

Z. Zhu, Z. Xie, W. Wang, Z. Liu, M. Wang, Y. Meng, Q. Peng, S. Liu, T. Jiang, K. Zhang, H. Liu, Y. Ma and W. Chen, Energy Environ. Sci., 2024, 17, 5013 DOI: 10.1039/D3EE03913G

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