Abstract:

Rechargeable aqueous zinc ion batteries (ZIBS) have many advantages such as high abundance and low cost of Zn and safer battery chemistry in aqueous ZnSO4 electrolytes. Tunnel and layer structured manganese dioxides (MnO2) are promising cathodes for ZIBS due to their high theoretical capacity (~300mAh/g), voltage (~1.4 V vs. Zn/Zn2+) and large tunnel openings facilitating fast Zn2+ insertion/removal. However, MnO2 suffers from severe capacity fading as the battery is put through extended charge-discharge cycles due to the cathode dissolution and formation of electrochemically inactive phases such as ZnMn204 and ZnMn307-xH20. In this talk, I will be talking about the progress we have made in the past two years on aqueous Zn/MnO¬¬2 battery system to improve the functional electrochemical performance.

Short Biography of the Speaker:

Dr. Poyraz received his BS (2007) and MS (2009) degrees from Bilkent University Chemistry Department, where he worked on mesoporous silica materials in Prof. Dag’s group. He received his Ph.D. in 2014 from the University of Connecticut under the supervision of Prof. Steven L. Suib. His graduate work was on design, synthesis, and characterization of porous and high surface area redox catalysts. Then, he moved to Brookhaven National Laboratory as a postdoctoral research associate and worked on rechargeable Li-ion batteries under the supervision of Prof. Esther S. Takeuchi. Since 2017, Dr. Poyraz is an Assistant Professor at Kennesaw State University Chemistry and Biochemistry Department. His current research interests are in the broad area of inorganic materials design, synthesis and characterization for rechargeable energy storage devices.