Issue 5, 2021
From the journal:

Energy & Environmental Science

Ultra-long-life and highly reversible Zn metal anodes enabled by a desolvation and deanionization interface layer†

Xiaotan Zhang,a   Jiangxu Li,b   Dongyan Liu,c   Mengke Liu,a   Tiansheng Zhou,a   Kaiwen Qi,a   Lei Shi,d   Yongchun Zhu ORCID logo *a  and  Yitai Qian ORCID logo *a  

* Corresponding authors

a Department of Applied Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China
E-mail: ychzhu@ustc.edu.cn, ytqian@ustc.edu.cn

b School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China

c Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, P. R. China

d Department of Chemistry and National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, P. R. China

Abstract

The zinc metal anode in aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) is considerably impeded by uncontrollable dendrite growth and intricately water-induced corrosion, leading to low Coulombic efficiency (CE) and limited lifespan. Herein, a bifunctional cellulose nanowhisker-graphene (CNG) membrane was constructed to mitigate these problems. Experimental analysis and molecular dynamics simulation reveal that the CNG membrane, functioning as a desolvation layer to preclude H2O molecules encountering the Zn anode, retards the water-induced corrosion reaction. This CNG layer with negative surface charges can simultaneously generate a deanionization shock by spreading cations but screening anions to obtain redirected Zn deposition parallel to the (0002)Zn plane. Furthermore, the flexible and toughened CNG membrane could withstand a strong tensile force (8.54 N) and a great puncture force (0.10 N) to favorably accommodate the Zn anode surface fluctuation during plating/stripping. Accordingly, CNG/Zn anode delivers an enhanced CE (99.4%) and a longer cycle life (∼5500 h), over 27 times that of a bare Zn anode. A full MnO2/graphene-CNG/Zn battery exhibits a high discharge capacity (307 mA h g−1) and maintains a high capacity retention of 87.8% at 5C after 5000 cycles.

Graphical abstract: Ultra-long-life and highly reversible Zn metal anodes enabled by a desolvation and deanionization interface layer

About
Cited by
Related
Download options Please wait...

Supplementary files

Article information

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1039/D0EE03898A
Article type
Paper
Submitted
14 Dec 2020
Accepted
12 Mar 2021
First published
17 Mar 2021

Energy Environ. Sci., 2021,14, 3120-3129

Permissions

Request permissions

Ultra-long-life and highly reversible Zn metal anodes enabled by a desolvation and deanionization interface layer

X. Zhang, J. Li, D. Liu, M. Liu, T. Zhou, K. Qi, L. Shi, Y. Zhu and Y. Qian, Energy Environ. Sci., 2021, 14, 3120 DOI: 10.1039/D0EE03898A

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements