Zinc–Air Flow Batteries at the Nexus of Materials Innovation and Reaction Engineering
Xinhe Liu, Xinyan Liu, Hong‐Jie Peng
Abstract
Electrically rechargeable zinc–air flow batteries (ZAFBs) remain promising candidates for large-scale, sustainable energy storage. The implementation of a flowing electrolyte system could mitigate several inherent issues at static conditions, such as zinc dendrite and byproduct accumulation. This review focuses on two important aspects for the development of advanced ZAFBs, materials innovation and reaction engineering, and summarizes corresponding research efforts in improving the anode utilization and reversibility, designing air cathodes with superior bifunctional catalysis toward oxygen reduction and evolution reactions, and engineering/optimizing cell configurations and complementary operation parameters. Finally, an outlook on the remaining challenges and possible directions of codesign for ZAFBs is supplied. We anticipate this review to illuminate the development of modern ZAFBs and other analogous systems at the nexus of materials science and chemical engineering.