Nonionic Surfactant-Assisted In Situ Generation of Stable Passivation Protective Layer for Highly Stable Aqueous Zn Metal Anodes

• Published in: Nano letters Vol. 22; no. 21; pp. 8574 - 8583
• Main Authors: Zhang, Yuanjun, Zheng, Xiaoyang, Wu, Kuan, Zhang, Ying, Xu, Gang, Wu, Minghong, Liu, Hua-Kun, Dou, Shi-Xue, Wu, Chao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society 09.11.2022
• Subjects: Aqueous Zn-ion battery; Protection layer; High areal capacity; Nonionic surfactant; Zn metal anodes
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c03114

A highly stable interface for aqueous rechargeable Zn batteries is of importance to inhibit the growth of Zn dendrites and suppress the side reactions. In this work, we have developed a stable honeycomb-like ZnO passivation protective layer on the Zn surface, which is in situ generated with the assistance of a nonionic surfactant additive (polyethylene glycol tert-octylphenyl ether, denoted as PEGTE). The ZnO passivation layer can facilitate the uniform distribution of the electric field, guiding the uniform deposition of Zn2+ and inhibit the generation of dendrites. As a result, the symmetric cell using the electrolyte with PEGTE shows an excellent performance at high areal capacity, reflected by stable cycling for over 2400 h at 5 mAh/cm2 and 1300 h at 10 mAh/cm2. The full cell paired with V2O5 demonstrates a long lifespan for more than 600 cycles at a low negative/positive capacity ratio.