Impressive improvement of zinc-iodine battery performance by doping poly(vinyl alcohol) into the cathode.

Abstract

Herein, a KB-P60 cathode was synthesized from poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) coated Ketjen black (KB). The specific capacity of KB-P60 was increased by 113% from pure KB at 1 A g^-1. In addition, KB-P60 achieved an ultra-long cycle life of 30 000 cycles at 20 A g^-1 with minimal degradation, effectively suppressing the shuttle effect. This study provides a new approach to mitigating the shuttle effect in zinc-iodine batteries.