Du, Wenjia;
Zhang, Zhenyu;
Iacoviello, Francesco;
Zhou, Shangwei;
Owen, Rhodri E;
Jervis, Rhodri;
Brett, Dan JL;
(2023)
Observation of Zn Dendrite Growth via Operando Digital Microscopy and Time-Lapse Tomography.
ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
10.1021/acsami.2c19895.
(In press).
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Abstract
The zinc-ion battery is one of the promising candidates for next-generation energy storage devices beyond lithium technology due to the earth’s abundance of Zn materials and their high volumetric energy density (5855 mA h cm–3). To date, the formation of Zn dendrites during charge–discharge cycling still hinders the practical application of zinc-ion batteries. It is, therefore, crucial to understand the formation mechanism of the zinc dendritic structure before effectively suppressing its growth. Here, the application of operando digital optical microscopy and in situ lab-based X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) is demonstrated to probe and quantify the morphologies of zinc electrodeposition/dissolution under multiple galvanostatic plating/stripping conditions in symmetric Zn||Zn cells. With the combined microscopy approaches, we directly observed the dynamic nucleation and subsequent growth of Zn deposits, the heterogeneous transportation of charged clusters/particles, and the evolution of ‘dead’ Zn particles via partial dissolution. Zn electrodeposition at the early stage is mainly attributed to activation, while the subsequent dendrite growth is driven by diffusion. The high current not only facilitates the formation of sharp dendrites with a larger mean curvature at their tips but also leads to dendritic tip splitting and the creation of a hyper-branching morphology. This approach offers a direct opportunity to characterize dendrite formation in batteries with a metal anode in the laboratory.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Observation of Zn Dendrite Growth via Operando Digital Microscopy and Time-Lapse Tomography |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acsami.2c19895 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.2c19895 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2023 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
| Keywords: | zinc electrodeposition, dendrites, plating, stripping, X-ray computed tomography |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Chemical Engineering |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10166384 |
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