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Updated: Jun 29, 2025

Zinc-Sponge Battery Electrodes that Suppress Dendrites
Published on: September 29, 2020
Long-Life Zn Anode Enabled with Complexing Ability of a Benign Electrolyte Additive
Dandan Yu1, Huanle Niu1, Tian Tian1
1Key Laboratory of Eco-functional Polymer Materials of the Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Northwest Normal University, Lanzhou 730070, China.
Abstract:
The development of aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) is hindered by several problems, including Zn dendrite/corrosion, side reactions, and hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Herein, trisodium citrate (NaCit) additive is introduced into the ZnSO4 electrolyte to guide the preferred Zn(002) crystal plane growth, while the Cit- is preferentially adsorbed on the active sites to suppress the HER and Zn corrosion, thus achieving uniform Zn deposition without dendrites. The stable cycle life can reach 2000 h at 0.25 mA cm-2/0.05 mAh cm-2. The density functional theory simulations further indicate that the parallely placed Cit- has the lowest adsorption energy (-6.617 eV); it can form a weak interaction with Zn metal to promote the growth of (002) crystal planes. Furthermore, the assembled Zn//polyaniline full cell and pouch cell both exhibit good rate performance and long cycling stability. The complexation and dissolubilization effects of the NaCit additive provide a means for designing high-performance AZIBs.
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