Zincophilic Cu Sites Induce Dendrite-Free Zn Anodes for Robust Alkaline/Neutral Aqueous Batteries

Metallic zinc (Zn) for next-generation aqueous batteries often suffers from severe dendrite growth, unfavorable hydrogen evolution, and self-corrosion, especially in alkaline electrolyte. Herein, the authors demonstrate a facile and efficient strategy to tackle above issues by electrochemically depositing Zn onto the Cu-Zn alloy surface (CZ-Zn). The zincophilic Cu sites throughout the Cu-Zn alloy can remarkably enhance the Zn2+ adsorption and promote homogeneous Zn nucleation on its surface, endowing it with highly reversible Zn plating/stripping chemistry. Furthermore, the intrinsically inert nature of Cu toward hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) and high dezincification potential of the Cu-Zn alloy can effectively alleviate the hydrogen evolution and Zn corrosion in aqueous electrolyte. Consequently, the symmetric cells with the CZ-Zn electrodes exhibit outstanding cycling life in both alkaline and neutral electrolytes, which can operate steadily over 800 h and 1600 h at 2.5 mAh cm(-2), respectively, far surpassing the pristine Zn electrodes. In addition, a high-performance alkaline full battery with ultra-long cyclic stability (no capacity degradation after 5000 cycles) and excellent Coulombic efficiency (CE) (100%) is achieved by pairing this CZ-Zn anode with a Ni3S2@polyaniline cathode. This study sheds light on the design of robust and ultra-stable Zn anodes for the state-of-art aqueous energy storage devices.