Silicon and Iron as Resource-Efficient Anode Materials for Ambient-Temperature Metal-Air Batteries: A Review

Metal-air batteries provide a most promising battery technology given their outstanding potential energy densities, which are desirable for both stationary and mobile applications in a “beyond lithium-ion” battery market. Silicon- and iron-air batteries underwent less research and development compared to lithium- and zinc-air batteries. Nevertheless, in the recent past, the two also-ran battery systems made considerable progress and attracted rising research interest due to the excellent resource-efficiency of silicon and iron. Silicon and iron are among the top five of the most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust, which ensures almost infinite material supply of the anode materials, even for large scale applications. Furthermore, primary silicon-air batteries are set to provide one of the highest energy densities among all types of batteries, while iron-air batteries are frequently considered as a highly rechargeable system with decent performance characteristics. Considering fundamental aspects for the anode materials, i.e., the metal electrodes, in this review we will first outline the challenges, which explicitly apply to silicon- and iron-air batteries and prevented them from a broad implementation so far. Afterwards, we provide an extensive literature survey regarding state-of-the-art experimental approaches, which are set to resolve the aforementioned challenges and might enable the introduction of silicon- and iron-air batteries into the battery market in the future.