Dr. Deepa Madan has received a TEDCO-MII (Maryland Innovation Initiative award) grant.
The objective of the funded project is to demonstrate a flexible rechargeable Zn battery (RZB) prototype and formulate a comprehensive plan for its commercialization for wearable device applications. Commercially available rechargeable batteries contain toxic, costly, and flammable materials (e.g., Li-based compounds and liquid electrolytes). These materials impose strict packaging requirements (to ensure safety) that result in rigid and bulky batteries of fixed shapes and sizes (e.g., coin cell, cylindrical, and prismatic). The funded project builds on the RZB technology (pioneered in Dr. Madan's lab at UMBC) that exploits abundantly available, non-toxic, and non-flammable materials (Zn for anode, MnO2 for cathode, and chitosan as gel electrolyte) to demonstrate a safe, scalable, and flexible RZB. By demonstrating the unique advantages of safety and design flexibility, which enables larger battery footprint and hence better performance, Dr. Madan expects to enable RZB commercialization for wearable device applications.