Green recycling of spent electrode of binder-free Cu supported Ag nanowires in gas sensor field: Attempt of turning waste into treasure for the rechargeable battery

作者：Xu, Fanyu; Li, Xin; Zhang, Yunzhuo; Geng, Jiaqi; Hu, Junhong; Tan, Wenhu^*

来源：Applied Surface Science, 2022, 581: 152326.

DOI：10.1016/j.apsusc.2021.152326

• Green recycling
• Spent electrode
• Binder-free Cu supported Ag nanowires
• Cu
• Ag nanosheets
• Benzyl alcohol
• Gas sensor

With the development of energy saving and new energy technology, the growing need of rechargeable batteries presents a serious waste-recycling challenge. The recycling issues should be focused on to prevent environmental pollution and huge waste of resources. In this work Cu-supported Ag nanowires (Cu/Ag_NWs) as binder-free electrode are developed for rechargeable aqueous silver-zinc batteries. With the Ag loading of 3.54 mg cm-2, the Cu/Ag_NWs electrode achieves areal capacity of 1.42 mAh cm-2 at a high current density of 10 mA cm-2. After more than 18,000 times galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) test, the spent electrode of Cu/Ag_NWs with 20% original capacity transformed into nanosheet structure. Followed facile ultrasonic, cleaning and annealing treatment for the spent Cu/Ag_NWs electrode, the collected CuO/Ag2O nanosheets (CuO/Ag2O_NSs) are used for gas sensors. The sensor based on the CuO/Ag2O_NSs exhibits high response of 27.69 and fast response/recovery speed (0.9/5.2 s) upon 100 ppm benzyl alcohol gas at 300 degrees C. This work explores an efficient way in turning waste into treasure for the rechargeable battery in gas sensing application.