Manipulating Horizontal Zn Deposition with Graphene Interpenetrated Zn Hybrid Foils for Dendrite‐Free Aqueous Zinc Ion Batteries

Abstract

Aqueous zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) with intrinsic safety have great potentials in portable devices, but suffer from limited cycling life mainly caused by serious dendrite growth and unavoidable side reactions of Zn anodes. Herein, graphene interpenetrated Zn (GiZn) hybrid foils are developed for dendrite‐free and long‐term Zn anodes for high‐performance ZIBs. The GiZn anode is prepared by interfacial assembly of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) on the skeletons of zinc foams, followed by mechanical compression into hybrid foils and drying process. The presence of the rGO nanosheets in the GiZn hybrid foils provides abundant zincophilic sites to induce horizontal Zn deposition for Zn metal anodes without the growth of dendrites. Meanwhile, the uniform distribution of rGO nanosheets endows the hybrid foils with superior conductivity and wetting ability with electrolytes for reduced interfacial resistances. As a result, GiZn‐based symmetric cells exhibit a small voltage hysteresis of 30.4 mV and remarkable areal capacity of 30 mAh cm−2 at 0.5 mA cm−2. Further, GiZn anodes also enable the corresponding aqueous Zn||MnO2 batteries with high capacity of 168.5 mAh g−1 at 8 C, superior to the counterpart with pure Zn foil anodes (72.7 mAh g−1). Therefore, GiZn hybrid foil anodes will shed light on the rational construction of 2D material‐interpenetrated Zn hybrid foil anodes for high‐performance ZIBs.