Huang Zhihao, Xu Shunfa, Zhang Shuhao, Ni Jiangfeng, Li Liang
School of Physical Science and Technology, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Frontier Material Physics and Devices, Suzhou Key Laboratory of Intelligent Photoelectric Perception, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Negative Carbon Technologies, Center for Energy Conversion Materials & Physics (CECMP), Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China.
Small. 2025 Aug;21(31):e2502863. doi: 10.1002/smll.202502863. Epub 2025 Jun 2.
Aqueous zinc batteries emerge as a promising energy storage technology due to their high safety and low cost. However, challenges such as dendrite growth and electrolyte corrosion severely limit the reversibility of zinc anodes. In this study, a 3D Zn architecture with hydrophilic-hydrophobic patterned surfaces is proposed for robust and stable anodes. The 3D architecture of Zn offers sufficient sites and space for zinc plating, the hydrophobic layer isolates Zn from water attack, and the hydrophilic layer facilitates the rapid transport of electrolyte ions. This unique design endows Zn with robust Zn stripping and plating behaviors, outperforming many recently reported Zn anodes. Notably, symmetric batteries with this Zn achieve 2500 h of stable cycling at 5 mA cm. In addition, Zn-ion capacitors with this Zn anode exhibit outstanding cycling stability, maintaining a capacity retention of 76% over 5000 cycles at 0.5 A g. This study highlights that the rational integration of multiple strategies can fully leverage their merits to achieve exceptional performance, thus offering a reliable solution for enabling stable and dendrite-free operation of metal batteries.
水系锌电池因其高安全性和低成本而成为一种很有前景的储能技术。然而，枝晶生长和电解质腐蚀等挑战严重限制了锌负极的可逆性。在本研究中，提出了一种具有亲水-疏水图案化表面的三维锌结构，用于构建坚固且稳定的负极。锌的三维结构为锌电镀提供了足够的位点和空间，疏水层将锌与水侵蚀隔离开来，亲水层则促进电解质离子的快速传输。这种独特的设计赋予锌强大的锌剥离和电镀行为，优于许多最近报道的锌负极。值得注意的是，采用这种锌的对称电池在5 mA cm下可实现2500小时的稳定循环。此外，采用这种锌负极的锌离子电容器表现出出色的循环稳定性，在0.5 A g下经过5000次循环后容量保持率为76%。这项研究强调，多种策略的合理整合可以充分发挥它们的优点，以实现卓越的性能，从而为实现金属电池的稳定且无枝晶运行提供可靠的解决方案。
