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With plenty of charges and rich functional groups, bovine serum albumin (BSA) protein provides effective transport for multiple metallic ions inside blood vessels. Inspired by the unique ionic transport function, we develop a BSA protein coating to stabilize Li anode, regulate Li+ transport, and resolve the Li dendrite growth for Li metal batteries (LMBs). The experimental and simulation studies demonstrate that the coating has strong interactions with Li metal, increases the wetting with electrolyte, reduces the electrolyte/Li side reactions, and significantly suppresses the Li dendrite formation. As a result, the BSA coating exhibits excellent stability in the electrolyte and improves the performance of Li|Cu and Li|Li cells as well as the LiFePO4|Li batteries. This work reveals that LMBs can benefit from the biological function of BSA, i.e., special transport capability of metallic ions, and lays an important foundation in design of protein-based materials for effectively enhancing the electrochemical performance of energy storage systems.
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Promising sustainable technology for energy storage devices: Natural protein-derived active materials
Electrochemical energy storage devices (EESDs) are critical technologies in modern economy, covering numerous fields such as portable electronics, electric vehicles, etc. The expanding market of EESDs demands for extra requirements such as safety, environmental friendliness and low cost, in addition to increasingly enhanced electrochemical properties. Natural proteins are abundant, versatile bio-macromolecules involving tremendous amount of amino acids/functional groups/heteroatoms, which greatly benefit sustainable technologies for advancing performances of EESDs. Recent years, significant research on utilizing natural proteins including plant/animal proteins to fabricate active materials for enhancing performance of EESDs has been well reported. Therefore, it is important to comprehensively summarize the progress and achievements, analyze the advantages/challenges, and predict the prospective for future protein-based strategies toward high performance EESDs, which are the contents of this review. The protein-derived active materials include activated carbons, silicon, sulfur, metal alloys, transitional metal compounds, and nonprecious metal catalysts. The resulting EESDs are associated with Li-/Na-/K-ion batteries, metal–air batteries, and redox flow batteries, as well as supercapacitors. The contributions of proteins to stabilizing/protecting electrodes, and thus enhancing performance of EESDs are specifically emphasized. Furthermore, studies on genetical engineering of proteins for directing self-assembly of active material nanoparticles are introduced.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1929236
- PAR ID:
- 10471271
- Publisher / Repository:
- Elsevier Ltd.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Electrochimica Acta
- Volume:
- 441
- Issue:
- C
- ISSN:
- 0013-4686
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 141860: 1-21
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- Active material, Electrode, Electrochemical, Energy storage, Battery, Supercapacitor, Catalyst, Genetical engineering
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2023.141860
