Synthesis of Carbon Nanotube Incorporated Metal Oxides for the Fabrication of Printable, Flexible Nickel-Zinc Batteries

The development of printable composite electrodes embedded with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for flexible nickel-zinc batteries is presented. The cathode and the anode comprised of Ni(OH)₂-CNT and ZnO-CNT respectively are prepared by coprecipitation of the metal oxides on CNTs. High loading ratio of electroactive materials increases the amount of active materials in electrode, but causes a lower material utilization efficiency due to decrease in overall electrode conductivity. The direct loading of active materials onto CNTs enhances contact where the CNTs serve the pathways for electron transport leading to higher performance than physical mixing of active ingredients. The cells show good performance even under bending conditions and the overall technology is scalable by printing methods.