Wang Quan, Associate Professor, from the School of Materials Engineering recently published the title " Highly efficient dendrite suppressor and corrosion inhibitor based on gelatin/Mn²⁺ Co-additives for aqueous rechargeable zinc-manganese dioxide battery " in the internationally renowned journal " Chemical Engineering Journal" (Zone 1, Chinese Academy of Sciences, IF = 10.652) with the corresponding author and Changshu Institute of Technology as the first completion unit . This study reported the 0.2 M Mn²⁺ and 0.5 wt% gelatin in the electrolyte are beneficial to mitigate both dendrite growth and corrosion. Ex situ X-ray diffraction results suggested that the presence of Mn²⁺ ions during zinc depositing process changes the preferred zinc orientation from the (112) plane to (103) and (002) planes, which are not prone to zinc dendrite growth. The Zn//Zn symmetric cells revealed that the coexistence of Mn²⁺ ions and gelatin greatly increase the sand’s time (>500 h) of zinc dendrite formation. The assembled Zn//polyaniline/MnO₂ battery using Mn²⁺/gelatin co-added electrolyte demonstrated good capacity retention of 80% after 1000 repeated cycles at 500 mAg^-1.

Thesis link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1385894720333167

Wang Quan is an associate professor in the School of Materials Engineering, Changshu Institute of Technology. He as a visiting scholar has been to University of Waterloo of Canada to do research for one year. He received his PhD degree in 2007 from Lanzhou University (China). His current research interests focus on the Energy storage materials, including Lithium ion batteries and Zinc ion batteries. He has published 16 papers in prestigious international refereed journals.