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An all-in-one nanopore battery array

Nature Nanotechnology volume 9, pages 1031–1039 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

A single nanopore structure that embeds all components of an electrochemical storage device could bring about the ultimate miniaturization in energy storage. Self-alignment of electrodes within each nanopore may enable closer and more controlled spacing between electrodes than in state-of-art batteries. Such an ‘all-in-one’ nanopore battery array would also present an alternative to interdigitated electrode structures that employ complex three-dimensional geometries with greater spatial heterogeneity. Here, we report a battery composed of an array of nanobatteries connected in parallel, each composed of an anode, a cathode and a liquid electrolyte confined within the nanopores of anodic aluminium oxide, as an all-in-one nanosize device. Each nanoelectrode includes an outer Ru nanotube current collector and an inner nanotube of V2O5 storage material, forming a symmetric full nanopore storage cell with anode and cathode separated by an electrolyte region. The V2O5 is prelithiated at one end to serve as the anode, with pristine V2O5 at the other end serving as the cathode, forming a battery that is asymmetrically cycled between 0.2 V and 1.8 V. The capacity retention of this full cell (relative to 1 C values) is 95% at 5 C and 46% at 150 C, with a 1,000-cycle life. From a fundamental point of view, our all-in-one nanopore battery array unveils an electrochemical regime in which ion insertion and surface charge mechanisms for energy storage become indistinguishable, and offers a testbed for studying ion transport limits in dense nanostructured electrode arrays.

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Figure 1: Nanopore battery geometry.
Figure 2: Electrochemical charge–discharge of a V2O5/Ru nanotube half-cell device.
Figure 3: Electrochemical charge–discharge of a half-cell device at high-rate cycle life.
Figure 4: Rate performance of V2O5 nanotube half cell with planar Au versus Ru-nanotube current collectors.
Figure 5: Deconvolution of charge contributions from CVs.
Figure 6: Symmetrically cycled full cell with voltage window from −1 V to 1 V.
Figure 7: Asymmetrical cycling between 0.2 V and 1.8 V.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Nanostructures for Electrical Energy Storage (NEES), an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (award no. DESC0001160). The authors acknowledge support from the Maryland NanoCenter and the NispLab, and thank C. Wang for providing electrolyte, M. Noked, Y. Xu and C. Sun for discussions regarding electrochemistry and J. Provine for valuable suggestions for noble-metal ALD.

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Author notes

  1. Eleanor I. Gillette and Xinyi Chen: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    Chanyuan Liu, Xinyi Chen, Alexander J. Pearse, Alexander C. Kozen, Marshall A. Schroeder, Keith E. Gregorczyk, Sang Bok Lee & Gary W. Rubloff

  2. Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    Chanyuan Liu, Xinyi Chen, Alexander J. Pearse, Alexander C. Kozen, Marshall A. Schroeder, Keith E. Gregorczyk & Gary W. Rubloff

  3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, Maryland, USA

    Eleanor I. Gillette & Sang Bok Lee

  4. Lam Research Corporation, Tualatin, 97062, Oregon, USA

    Xinyi Chen

  5. CIC nanoGUNE, Donostia, 20012, Gipuzkoa, Spain

    Keith E. Gregorczyk

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  1. Chanyuan Liu
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Contributions

C.L., X.C., S.B.L. and G.W.R. conceived and designed the experiments. C.L. and X.C. performed the half-cell experiments. C.L. performed the full-cell experiment. E.I.G. conducted the COMSOL simulation. A.J.P. carried out XPS characterization. K.E.G., A.C.K. and M.A.S. contributed material fabrication tools. C.L., E.I.G., S.B.L. and G.W.R. co-wrote the paper. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sang Bok Lee or Gary W. Rubloff.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Liu, C., Gillette, E., Chen, X. et al. An all-in-one nanopore battery array. Nature Nanotech 9, 1031–1039 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2014.247

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