As common energy storage devices, batteries play a key role in our daily life. Modern batteries are no longer characterized by the simple purpose of energy storage, but with designed multifunctionality as one of the hot topics and development directions of the battery research. A new-style electrochromic battery has been conceived which enables the highly desired convenient user-device interface based on a friendly human-readable output. However, the field of combination between the technology of battery and electrochromism is still rather young with many unsolved problems. For example, the specific capacity that the electrochromic battery delivers is rather low and the battery device needs a very long time for self-charging (12 hours). Therefore, exploring smart electrochromic battery with high performances is undoubtedly a worthwhile field of inquiry, and various solutions for building electrochromic batteries with new device configurations are eagerly needed.
Recently, Prof. ZHAO Zhigang’s group, at Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed a high-capacity electrochromic batteries with ultrafast charging in seconds.
The aluminum (Al)/tungsten oxide material system was selected to build new electrochromic batteries,and they show the extraordinary advantages.First ,the new born battery established an interactive interface between user and devices. Second, ultrafast charging could be realized by the small addition of hydrogen peroxide (8s). Third, the capacity of this electrochromic battery was 6 times higher than those of congeneric devices. This study opens the door for the future electrochromic batteries development.
The results of this work have been accepted by Angew. Chem. Int. Ed and evaluated as hot paper. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Fig. 1 the different-state visual figures of electrochromic batteries.(Image by ZHAO Zhigang's group)
Contact information:Prof. ZHAO Zhigang
Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics ,Chinese Academy of Science
Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, China.
E-mail: zgzhao2011@sinano.ac.cn
