Building Sustainable Saturated Fatty Acid-Zinc Interfacial Layer toward Ultra-Stable Zinc Metal Anodes

The commercialization pace of aqueous zinc batteries (AZBs) is seriously limited due to the uncontrolled dendrite growth and severe corrosion reaction of the zinc anode. Herein, a universal and extendable saturated fatty acid-zinc interfacial layer strategy for modulating the interfacial redox process of zinc toward ultrastable Zn metal anodes is proposed. The in situ complexing of saturated fatty acid-zinc interphases could construct an extremely thin zinc compound layer with continuously constructed zincophilic sites which kinetically regulates Zn nucleation and deposition behaviors. Furthermore, the multifunctional interfacial layer with internal hydrophobic carbon chains as a protective layer is efficient to exclude active water molecules from the surface and efficiently inhibit the surface corrosion of zinc. Consequently, the modified anode shows a long cycle life of over 4000 h at 5 mA cm-2. In addition, the assembled Zn||V2O5 full cells based on modified zinc anodes have excellent rate performance and long cycle stability.

Automated summary

A strategy of using saturated fatty acid-zinc interfacial layer to modulate the interfacial redox process of zinc for ultrastable Zn metal anodes is proposed. The in situ complexing of saturated fatty acid-zinc interphases can construct a thin zinc compound layer with zincophilic sites that regulate Zn nucleation and deposition behaviors. The multifunctional interfacial layer with internal hydrophobic carbon chains as a protective layer efficiently excludes active water molecules and inhibits the surface corrosion of zinc. The modified anode shows a long cycle life of over 4000 h at 5 mA cm-2.