Eur. Phys. J. Plus (2021) 136: 360
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-01341-y

Regular Article

Corrosion attenuation of zinc electrode in Zn−MnO2 battery by shielding effect in an aqueous ammonium chloride electrolyte

¹ Laboratoire D’Electrochimie, Corrosion Et de Valorisation Energétique (LECVE), Université de Bejaia, 06000, Bejaia, Algeria
² Centre de Recherche en Technologie Des Semi-Conducteurs Pour L’Energétique CRTSE, 16000, Algiers, Algeria
³ Laboratoire D’Energétique Et D’Electrochimie du Solide (LEES), Université de Setif, 19000, Setif, Algeria
⁴ Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire de Spectroscopie Electronique (LISE), Namur Institute of Structured Matter (NISM), University of Namur, 61 Rue de Bruxelles, 5000, Namur, Belgium

^a moulaifatsah@gmail.com, moulai.fatsah@crtse.dz

Received: 4 March 2020
Accepted: 23 March 2021
Published online: 5 April 2021

Abstract

In this paper, we report on the electrochemical behavior of zinc (Zn) anode in Zn–MnO₂ battery tested in aqueous NH₄Cl electrolyte with a concentration ranging from 0.01 to 1 M without any additives. The Zn electrode shows the lowest corrosion behavior for the 0.1 M concentration. Such corrosion decrease was attributed to a shielding effect due to the formation of a corrosion layer expressed by a higher charge transfer resistance (R_ct) of 270 Ω. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis shows that it constitutes by ZnO, Zn(OH)₂ and Zn(NH₃)₂Cl₂. The Zn was successfully assembled with MnO₂ to form a Zn/MnO₂ cell using 0.1 M NH₄Cl electrolyte. Two types of MnO₂ powders were experimented as cathode namely nanostructured MnO₂ (NMD) and commercial MnO₂ (EMD). It was found that NMD gives the best performance in terms of output voltage and specific energy. Indeed, the Zn/NMD cell has a voltage of 1.743 V which is higher than that of Zn/EMD (1.674 V) at a current of 1 mA. It was found that the cells voltage decreased after 4 h of continuous discharge to 1.712 V and 1.660 V, respectively. Moreover, the Zn/NMD cell can reach a highest specific energy of 228.30 mWh/g. Therefore, our Zn/NMD cell can be used for a high-performance primary battery and take over Zn/MnO₂ battery market.