@article{Li2024, 
author = {Mengxuan Li and Linfeng Yu and Hai Liu and Chuanyi Zhang and Jiazhan Li and Liang Luo and Xiaoming Sun},
title = {Sourcing the merits of 3D integrated air cathodes for high-performance Zn-air batteries by bubble pump consumption chronoamperometry},
year = {2024},
journal = {Nano Research},
volume = {17},
number = {8},
pages = {6951-6959},
keywords = {Zn-air batteries, superaerophilic, gas diffusion coefficient, effective catalytic sites density, three-dimensional (3D) integrated air cathodes},
url = {https://www.sciopen.com/article/10.1007/s12274-024-6700-8},
doi = {10.1007/s12274-024-6700-8},
abstract = {Zn-air batteries (ZABs) as a potential energy conversion system suffer from low power density (typically ≤ 200 mW·cm−2). Recently, three-dimensional (3D) integrated air cathodes have demonstrated promising performance over traditional two-dimensional (2D) plane ones, which is ascribed to enriched active sites and enhanced diffusion, but without experimental evidence. Herein, we applied a bubble pump consumption chronoamperometry (BPCC) method to quantitatively identify the gas diffusion coefficient (D) and effective catalytic sites density (ρEC) of the integrated air cathodes for ZABs. Furthermore, the D and ρEC values can instruct consequent optimization on the growth of Co embedded N-doped carbon nanotubes (CoNCNTs) on carbon fiber paper (CFP) and aerophilicity tuning, giving 4 times D and 1.3 times ρEC over the conventional 2D Pt/C-CFP counterparts. As a result, using the CoNCNTs with half-wave potential of merely 0.78 V vs. RHE (Pt/C: 0.89 V vs. RHE), the superaerophilic CoNCNTs-CFP cathode-based ZABs exhibited a superior peak power density of 245 mW·cm−2 over traditional 2D Pt/C-CFP counterparts, breaking the threshold of 200 mW·cm−2. This work reveals the intrinsic feature of the 3D integrated air cathodes by yielding exact D and ρEC values, and demonstrates the feasibility of BPCC method for the optimization of integrated electrodes, bypassing trial-and-error strategy.}
}