Sharp is developing zinc-air energy storage batteries and aims to start verification tests in 2025

News from this site on February 7. According to a recent report from Nikkei Chinese, Sharp is promoting the development of a new battery called "zinc-air battery" and strives to start verification tests in 2025. Sharp claims that the battery can have the same energy density as mainstream lithium batteries while having twice the service life, up to about 20 years. Zinc has previously been used as a negative electrode material for disposable batteries such as alkaline dry batteries (Note from this site: such as alkaline zinc-manganese batteries), but it can hardly be used in rechargeable batteries that can be repeatedly charged and discharged. This is because if the zinc material is repeatedly charged and discharged, needle-like crystals will precipitate in the electrode part, causing a short circuit. The battery being developed by Sharp features a separation of charging and discharging units. Even if needle-like crystals form in the electrode part, short circuiting is unlikely to occur. Sharp strives to commercialize this new battery in the form of energy storage batteries.

Zinc-air battery principle diagram. Image source: Sharp official website

In the second half of the 20th century, many companies tried to use zinc in rechargeable batteries, but it was too difficult at the time based on the technical level, so they eventually gave up. In recent years, competition in the development of zinc rechargeable batteries has heated up again. The background is resource issues:

Compared with existing lithium batteries, the biggest advantage of zinc batteries is their abundant material reserves and low prices: zinc has high reserves and output One of the "basic metals", it is also easy to smelt, which can reduce the purchase cost of raw materials. In comparison, the current mainstream lithium batteries use rare metals such as lithium, cobalt, and nickel, which either have very few resources or are produced in a few countries. At the same time, the popularity of pure electric vehicles has led to tight supply and demand, and the price fluctuations of lithium battery-related metal materials are also obvious.

The person in charge of Sharp said that if zinc-air batteries are commercialized, they "are expected to be cheaper" than lithium batteries.

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