Metal electrode potential diverges with ion additions
Qiu Zhang, Seongjae Ko, Taisei Sakata, Shin-ichi Nishimura, Norio Takenaka, Atsushi Kitada, Chunsheng Wang, Atsuo Yamada · 2026
Read Metal electrode potential diverges with ion additions by Qiu Zhang, Seongjae Ko, Taisei Sakata, Shin-ichi Nishimura, Norio Takenaka, Atsushi Kitada, Chunsheng Wang, Atsuo Yamada (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13423825.txt.
Description
Qiu Zhang and colleagues showed in 2026 that surrounding ions can shift a metal electrode's redox potential by more than 0.6 volts in the zinc system. Potential governs reaction direction and energy, yet controlling its shifts remained elusive, so the team tested how ion hardness pairings reshape the zinc ion's solution shell.
Soft anions with hard cations destabilized the shell and pushed potential up. Hard anions with soft cations stabilized it and pushed potential down, and upshifted electrolytes lifted zinc plating efficiency above 99.9 percent. Battery chemists gain an ion-pairing rule for tuning electrode potentials without changing the metal itself.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Qiu Zhang, Seongjae Ko, Taisei Sakata, Shin-ichi Nishimura, Norio Takenaka, Atsushi Kitada, Chunsheng Wang, Atsuo Yamada |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 38 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |