Novel electrochemical half-cell design and fabrication for performance analysis of metal-air battery air-cathodes

Metal-air batteries (MABs) are considered promising candidates for sustainable energy storage & conversion applications. Air-cathodes have been identified to be the major challenge towards the commercialization of MAB technology. In development of air-cathodes effectively, a method, or a device is desired for cathode evaluation at operating conditions that are as close as possible to that of an actual battery. In this paper, for diagnosing, evaluating and analyzing the electrochemical performance of MAB air-cathodes, a novel electrochemical half-cell has been designed and fabricated. This half-cell is a three-electrode system, in which the air-cathode is used as the working electrode, a platinum wire with large area as the counter electrode and a saturated calomel electrode (SCE) as the reference electrode. The working electrode is designed to allow the surface of gas diffusion layer to be exposed to the air and the catalyst layer to be exposed to the electrolyte. This half-cell is validated by commercially available and in-house made air cathodes using electrochemical linear scan voltammetry (LSV) method in both neutral and alkaline solutions at various temperatures, enabling the in-situ performance evaluation and analysis of air-cathodes in an environment much closer to that of a primary aqueous metal-air battery while offering a more controlled laboratory environment and economic way for down-selecting and optimizing the air-cathodes.