Titanium-Containing Zincophilic Interface Enables Fast Kinetics and Ultrahigh-Rate Dendrite-Free Zn Anodes

Aqueous Zn-metal batteries are recognized as the forefront of the next-generation energy supply models due to their impressive capacity, high safety, and abundant resources. But excessive Zn dendrite growth, uncontrollable parasitic reactions, and notorious hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) seriously impede the durability of Zn metal anodes. Herein, the surface of Zn anode is reconstructed by decorating with a zincophilic TiHCF-TiO₂ (TTO) interface layer, simultaneously achieving suppression of HER and homogenizing the electric field and Zn²⁺ flux distributions at the anode interface to ensure uniform Zn deposition. Furthermore, the zincophilic TTO layer significantly lowers the nucleation barrier, providing abundant anchoring sites for Zn nucleation. Meanwhile, the TTO exhibits strong adsorption for the Zn (002) plane, which induces Zn horizontal deposition on the interface and effectively inhibits dendrite growth. As expected, the Zn@TTO anode exhibits a stable operation for over 11000 cycles with a relatively low overpotential of ≈300 mV at an ultrahigh current density of 100 mA cm^-2. More importantly, the Zn@TTO anodes demonstrate an outstanding cycling stability and low polarization in both coin and pouch full cells paired with an I₂ cathode.