Tailoring Interfacial Chemistry to Suppress Polarization Enables Practical Printable Zinc-Ion Batteries

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries emerge as a highly promising energy storage system owing to their intrinsic safety and cost-effectiveness. However, their practical deployment is hindered by parasitic hydrogen evolution and uncontrolled dendrite growth. In addition, the issue of high polarization by electrolyte engineering is largely overlooked despite its contribution to energy loss. Herein, a molecular additive strategy is proposed using hexose diphosphate hydrate (HDH) to construct a local water-deficient adsorption layer that reconstructs the electric double layer at the electrode/electrolyte interface. In addition, the adsorption behavior of HDH facilitates the formation of a solid-electrolyte interphase. This engineered interfacial environment effectively suppresses side reactions, enhances Zn²⁺ desolvation and migration kinetics, and promotes uniform, oriented Zn deposition along the 101 plane. Moreover, the modified electrolyte reduces voltage polarization and facilitates reaction kinetics. By employing a scalable screen-printing process, low-cost printable Zn||MnO₂ batteries are successfully fabricated with performance comparable to conventional coin batteries, enabling the practical feasibility of printed zinc-ion energy storage devices.