A Multifunctional Artificial Interphase with Fluorine-Doped Amorphous Carbon layer for Ultra-Stable Zn Anode

Building an artificial interphase layer for tackling uncontrollable Zn dendrites and serious side reactions is a highly desirable strategy, but it is often hampered by the limited Zn2+ transport. Here, a stable fluorine-doped amorphous carbon (CF) artificial layer is constructed on a Cu current collector (CF-Cu) via facile carbonization treatment of a fluoropolymer coating to realize underlying Zn deposition. As evidenced experimentally and theoretically, this inorganic CF layer with ionic conductivity and electronic insulation successfully triggers dendrite-free Zn deposition at the CF-Cu interface with preferred Zn(002) crystal plane stacking parallel to the substrate surface, thus greatly promoting the inhibition of Zn-dendrites and blocking of interfacial side reactions. The introduced fluorine atoms as abundant zincophilic sites play an important role in driving fast zinc-ion transfer kinetics, which can partly convert into ZnF2 as an artificial solid Zn2+ conductor to further guide uniform Zn deposition. Consequently, the CF-Cu electrode enables high reversibility with 99% coulombic efficiency and a long cycling stability of 1900 cycles at 2 mA cm(-2). The integrated CF-Cu@Zn anode achieves up to 2200 h cycles with a low voltage polarization. This work provides inspiration for the design of artificial interphase layers for stable nondendritic metal batteries.

Automated summary

This study successfully achieved dendrite-free Zn deposition and inhibited side reactions by constructing a stable fluorine-doped amorphous carbon (CF) artificial layer on a copper current collector, resulting in improved cycling stability of the battery.