Preparation of Schiff base surfactant and its application in alkaline zinc-nickel batteries

A Schiff base surfactant 2-octanone ethylenediamine (OED) was in this study designed to improve the performance of alkaline zinc-nickel batteries that were synthesized and characterized by IR and XRD. Electrochemical experimental results showed that addition of OED surfactant in both zinc electrode and electrolyte effectively inhibited self-corrosion of zinc electrode and improved performance of zinc-nickel battery charge and discharge. The battery capacity can keep almost 70 % of the theoretical capacity after 30 times cycles. The batteries also showed better performance, lower resistance, and longer cycle life with addition of surfactant, which can be attributed to fact that the zinc electrode surface had good adsorption capacity and coordination with zinc ions in the presence of surfactant.