Electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming a fashion trend, with more and more people around the world switching to electric vehicles. A look on the roads where you are bound to find a major fraction of vehicles being electric reaffirms this.
But this is more than a fashion trend. The shift from fossil fuels powered vehicles to electric vehicles is inevitable. Campaigns such as the EV30@30, with the aim of 30 percent vehicles being EVs by 2030 make it a sure thing that EVs are the future of mobility.
At the heart of the EVs is the battery which powers it. A highly efficient battery holds the secret behind the success of EVs. The materials that go into a battery not only need to be efficient, but they also must be eco-friendly and abundant on earth to make the EV and the battery technology sustainable.
Zinc-air batteries are attracting widespread attention because of their low cost, abundance of zinc reserves, higher theoretical energy density, and exceptional safety. However, two reactions, ORR (oxygen reduction reaction) and OER (oxygen evolution reaction) are key to make an efficient battery. A sluggish ORR or OER means a low-performing battery. Because of the multi-electron nature and complex reaction pathways, finding an efficient bifunctional cathode catalyst that performs both ORR and OER is challenging
A potential solution to this problem was found by the researchers at IIT Madras through a new class of porous crystalline materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) which was used as a template to make efficient bifunctional cathodes.
In their quest for better and more efficient bifunctional catalysts, the researchers, Ms. Sai Vani Terlapu and Prof. Ranjit Bauri from the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, India, synthesized manganese-doped cobalt oxide using a cobalt-based MOF, cobalt zeolitic imidazolate framework (Co-ZIF) as a template.
Different ratios of cobalt to manganese (0.5, 1, and 2) were tried out. Among all the studied compositions, Mn-Co3O4-1 (cobalt to manganese ratio = 1) was found to exhibit the best performance, illustrating the crucial role of an optimum level of manganese doping.
The manganese-doped cobalt oxides were found to be viable and efficient bifunctional oxygen electrocatalysts for developing high-performance zinc-air batteries and other electrochemical energy and conversion devices. It can pave the way for developing alternative and possibly better batteries compared to currently used Li-ion batteries (LIBs) for future electric mobility.
The results of the study were published in the peer reviewed journal Sustainable Energy & Fuels published by Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). The link for the original research article can be found here:
Article by Akshay Anantharaman
Click here for the original link to the paper
