Abstract
In recent years, the rapid growth of portable electronic devices requires the high-energy density characteristics of batteries. Zinc air batteries have specific capacity as high as 820mAh/g. However, Zinc air batteries used for hearing aid applications only so far, because the atmosphere could affect it, and it has weakness in the rate capability. However, recent developments of electrode manufacturing technologies made us to overcome that weakness. And the efforts of applying zinc air batteries to portable electronic devices, especially in cellular phone application have been increased. In this paper, the effects of conducting material and polymer binder in cathode on the electrochemical characteristics were investigated. Our research team succeeded in producing 2.4Ah class zinc air battery for cellular phone application. Its volumetric energy density was 920 wh/l, and gravimetric energy density was 308 wh/kg. The volumetric energy density of our zinc air battery is two times higher than one of lithium secondary battery, and three times higher than that of alkaline manganese battery.
