Energy Storage Division at DICP (DNL 17) Leaded by Prof. Huamin Zhang and Prof. Xianfeng Li has made a series of progress on non-fluorinated porous ions conducting membranes for flow battery. Below are recent representative acheivements:

Recent study has shown that the stability and selectivity of a membrane can be dramatically improved via constructing internal cross ing network (Advanced Functional Materials, 2015, 25(17): 2583-2589). d on their previous work, they recently further introduced this well connected internal cross ing structure to a non-fluorinated porous ions conducting membrane, offering a battery that is assembled with this membrane a stable performance over more than 6000 cycles. This work has been published in Advanced Functional Materials 2016，26，210-218.

A series of research progress in non-fluorinated porous ions conducting membranes for flow battery (Photo by YUAN Zhizhang)

To solve the conflict between conductivity and selectivity of a non-fluorinated porous ions conducting membrane and further afford an impressive battery performance, they successfully developed a kind of non-fluorinated ions conducting membrane with high conductivity, selectivity and low cost through the structure design. A battery assembled with this membrane shows an energy efficiency over 90% at 80mA/cm2, which is by far the highest value ever reported. Moreover, a battery with this membrane shows a stable performance over more than 13,000 charge/discharge cycles, which is up to now the longest cycle life ever reported, proving explicitly excellent stability. The related work has been published by Energy & Environmental Science 2016, 9, 441-447 as inside front cover and had received high evaluation from reviewers. They thought that: this is a ground breaking membrane work in the field of VRB from a well-respected group. Their effort and novelty are to be commended, which will have immediate and long-lasting impact for the vanadium redox flow battery technology.

A series of research progress in non-fluorinated porous ions conducting membranes for flow battery (Photo by YUAN Zhizhang)

They first proposed the “ion sieving conductive mechanism” and introduced porous ions conducting membranes in the flow battery application, achieving significantly progress in the non-fluorinated porous ions conducting membranes in the past few years (Energy Environ. Sci. 2013, 6, 776; 2012, 5, 6299; 2011, 4, 1147; 2011, 4, 1676; ChemsusChem, 6 (2013) 328; J. Mater. Chem. A, 2014, 2, 9524; Chem. Commun. 2014, 50, 4596; Sci. Rep. 4, 4016; DOI:10.1038/srep04016…). These results are further update progress d on their previous work.

These works have been financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, Outstanding Young Scientist Foundation CAS and Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials.(Text/ Photo by YUAN Zhizhang)

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