Zinc Ion Thermal Charging Cell for Low-grade Heat Conversion and Energy Storage

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2022 Jan 11

PMID 35013305

Authors

Zhiwei Li

Yinghong Xu

Langyuan Wu

Yufeng An

Yao Sun

Tingting Meng

Hui Dou

Yimin Xuan

Xiaogang Zhang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Converting low-grade heat from environment into electricity shows great sustainability for mitigating the energy crisis and adjusting energy configurations. However, thermally rechargeable devices typically suffer from poor conversion efficiency when a semiconductor is employed. Breaking the convention of thermoelectric systems, we propose and demonstrate a new zinc ion thermal charging cell to generate electricity from low-grade heat via the thermo-extraction/insertion and thermodiffusion processes of insertion-type cathode (VO-PC) and stripping/plating behaviour of Zn anode. Based on this strategy, an impressively high thermopower of ~12.5 mV K and an excellent output power of 1.2 mW can be obtained. In addition, a high heat-to-current conversion efficiency of 0.95% (7.25% of Carnot efficiency) is achieved with a temperature difference of 45 K. This work, which demonstrates extraordinary energy conversion efficiency and adequate energy storage, will pave the way towards the construction of thermoelectric setups with attractive properties for high value-added utilization of low-grade heat.

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