Nickel and Cobalt Materials for Zn Batteries

Rechargeable zinc air batteries are tremendously leading the road of improvements in order to become one of the potential alternatives to other household and widely used commercial batteries such as Li-ion batteries. Since many years, they have been in the race to emerge as a major breakthrough but are yet not ready for the prime time before they overcome certain shortcomings of the zinc batteries. Some stringent essential requirements of the battery include long service life, high energy storage capability, require little maintenance, and should be safe to use. In addition, the battery must deliver high power on demand, work at cold and hot temperatures, and cost little and charge quickly. Presence of metallic additives like nickel and cobalt in zinc batteries is considered one such useful technique to meet such requirements. Ni/Zn accumulator is known to improve peak power and high specific capacity of the battery. Presence of cobalt in nickel hydroxide electrodes aids its performance by reducing the oxygen overvoltage. Herein, we review about the fundamentals of zinc batteries and their scope of improvement by presence of metal additives to prepare them as futurist batteries on large scale.