报告人：Prof. Zhongwei Chen
Advanced Materials for Rechargeable Zinc-Air Battery
Developing low-cost, high-energy, safe, and long-life energy storage systems is critical for the widespread commercialization of smart grid and electric vehicles. Rechargeable zinc-air battery has been considered as the most promising candidate as the energy storage system for transportation, smart grids, and stationary power. They can display a considerably several times higher specific energy and volumetric energy density than that of the Li-ion battery. Besides, zinc-air batteries also demonstrate other desirable characteristics, such as abundant raw materials, environmental friendliness, safety, and low cost. The current zinc-air battery is typically composed of four main components: an air electrode, an alkaline electrolyte, a separator, and a zinc electrode. Each main structural component faces challenges for the electrically rechargeable zinc-air battery. In this presentation, we will present our recent work on advanced energy materials development for next-generation rechargeable zinc-air batteries by focusing on the nanostructured bifunctional oxygen electro-catalysts and mechanical studies on their corresponding electrochemicalbehaviors during battery cycling. More specifically, we will discuss: 1) how the nanoengineered materials can enhance the catalytic activity and durability of oxygen electro-catalysts, 2) what are the structural evolution and actual species of oxygen electro-catalysts in the zinc-air batteries operate, 3) how the 3D air electrode architectures and mechanical understandings can advance the practical performance of the zinc-air batteries, as well as their extended applications include portable, flexible, and diversely shaped zinc-air batteries.
Dr. Zhongwei Chen is a Distinguished Professor at Dalian Institue of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Director of the State Key Laboratory Catalysis - Energy; Director of Power Battery & Systems Research Centre, Editor of CCS Renewables, Vice President of the International Academy of Electrochemical Energy Science (IAOEES), Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineeringand Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was Canada Research Chair (CRC-Tier 1) Professor in Advanced Materials for Clean Energy at the University of Waterloo from 2017 to 2023 and Associate Editor of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (ACS-AMI) from 2017 to 2022. His research interests are in the development of advanced energy materials and electrodes for fuel cells, metal-air batteries, and lithium-ion batteries. He has published more than 470 peer-reviewed journal articles with over 50,000 citations with a H-index of 121 (Google Scholar). He is an inventor with over 100 China/US/international patents, with several international licenses to companies. He was the recipient of the 2016 E.W.R Steacie Memorial Fellowship, a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2016, a fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2017, the Rutherford memorial medal from The Royal Society of Canada in 2017, which followed upon several other prestigious honors, including the Ontario Early Researcher Award, an NSERC Discovery Supplement Award, the Distinguished Performance and Research Award. Dr. Chen was ranked as the Global Highly Cited Researchers by Clarivate Analytics in 2018-2022. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2019.
