RESUMEN
Effective water management is crucial for the optimal operation of low-temperature polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs). Excessive liquid water production can cause flooding in the gas diffusion electrodes and flow channels, limiting mass transfer and reducing PEMFC performance. To tackle this issue, a nature-inspired chemical engineering (NICE) approach has been adopted that takes cues from the integument structure of desert-dwelling lizards for passive water transport. By incorporating engraved, capillary microchannels into conventional flow fields, PEMFC performance improves significantly, including a 15% increase in maximum power density for a 25 cm2 cell and 13% for a 100 cm2 cell. Electro-thermal maps of the lizard-inspired flow field demonstrate a more uniform spatial distribution of current density and temperature than the conventional design. Neutron radiography provides evidence that capillary microchannels in the lizard-inspired flow field facilitate the efficient transport and removal of generated liquid water, thereby preventing blockages in the reactant channels. These findings present a universally applicable and highly efficient water management strategy for PEMFCs, with the potential for widespread practical implementation for other electrochemical devices.
RESUMEN
The zinc-ion battery is one of the promising candidates for next-generation energy storage devices beyond lithium technology due to the earth's abundance of Zn materials and their high volumetric energy density (5855 mA h cm-3). To date, the formation of Zn dendrites during charge-discharge cycling still hinders the practical application of zinc-ion batteries. It is, therefore, crucial to understand the formation mechanism of the zinc dendritic structure before effectively suppressing its growth. Here, the application of operando digital optical microscopy and in situ lab-based X-ray computed tomography (X-ray CT) is demonstrated to probe and quantify the morphologies of zinc electrodeposition/dissolution under multiple galvanostatic plating/stripping conditions in symmetric Zn||Zn cells. With the combined microscopy approaches, we directly observed the dynamic nucleation and subsequent growth of Zn deposits, the heterogeneous transportation of charged clusters/particles, and the evolution of 'dead' Zn particles via partial dissolution. Zn electrodeposition at the early stage is mainly attributed to activation, while the subsequent dendrite growth is driven by diffusion. The high current not only facilitates the formation of sharp dendrites with a larger mean curvature at their tips but also leads to dendritic tip splitting and the creation of a hyper-branching morphology. This approach offers a direct opportunity to characterize dendrite formation in batteries with a metal anode in the laboratory.
