Improving zincophilicity and manipulating de-solvation effect enabling high-performance zinc metal anodes

Abstract

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries are attractive green energy storage, but their reversibility and cycling stability are limited by the dendrite formation and corrosion of metallic Zn anode. A promising strategy for modification of Zn anode is to in-situ construct a highly zincophile and conductive artificial protective coating on the Zn anode surface. Herein, a stable Zn anode modified by in-situ growth of tungsten-doped zinc oxide interphase layer (WZO@Zn) was developed using a simple hydrothermal method. The as-obtained WZO@Zn anode exhibited not only improved zincophilicity for uniform Zn2+ deposition, but also enhanced conductivity for charge transfer, thus lower nucleation potential and de-solvation energy consumption. As a result, the WZO@Zn anode displayed an ultra-long cycle life of 4000 h and excellent plating/stripping reversibility with a high average coulombic efficiency of 99.6 % over 700 cycles. Furthermore, the assembled WZO@Zn//MnO2 full cells demonstrated more prominent cycle stability and higher capacity than that of Zn//MnO2. This work provided a simple and efficient pathway to stable Zn anodes toward development of aqueous energy storage system.