Construction of an artificial interfacial layer with porous structure toward stable zinc-metal anodes

Abstract

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries possess great potential in stationary energy storage devices. Nevertheless, the occurrence of zinc dendrite growth and hydrogen evolution reaction severely hinders the utilization efficiency and service life of zinc-metal anodes. Herein, an in situ etching strategy is proposed to construct an interfacial layer with porous structure on the surface of zinc foil under the assistance of tartaric acid (denoted as TA@Zn). The optimized anode surface is beneficial to not only achieve uniform Zn deposition behavior due to the low nucleation overpotential, but also enhance the interfacial reaction kinetics due to the reduced activation energy barrier. As expected, the TA@Zn-based symmetric cell delivers small voltage hysteresis and superior stability for 5000 h at the current density of 1 mA cm(-2). Moreover, the TA@Zn|NH4V4O10 cell also exhibits high specific capacity and long-term cycling stability.