Nanostructured Pb anodes for lead-acid batteries

A remarkable improvement in the performances and life time of the lead-acid batteries can be obtained by nanostructured electrodes because their morphology can be tailored for specific applications, so that high utilization of the active materials can be achieved with consequent high specific energy and power density.


Lead nanowires have been successfully fabricated by electro-deposition from lead solutions in nanostructured templates and tested as negative electrodes of a lead-acid battery. By electrodeposition it is possible to obtain pure lead nanowires. Different procedures were tested to detect the better conditions leading to straight nanowires, well attached to the current collector. Nanowires morphology and composition have been characterized by scanning electronic microscope analysis (SEM) and x-rays diffraction (XRD). By changing the template, it is possible to obtain nanostructures with regular array of either parallel or interconnected nanowires.



Advantages

The main advantage of these electrodes is the wide superficial area, about 70 times of the geometrical one, leading to a high utilization of the active material also at 1C rate, that is unusually high. Preliminary tests gave satisfactory results. Lead anode specific capacity is stable for more than two hundred charge/discharge cycles at the value of about 140 mAh/g delivered at the first cycle. Tests at 10C charge/discharge rate are in progress, and after 150 cycles, the performance is highly encouraging.