Zincophilic Copper-Based Architectures for Stable Zinc Anodes: Mechanisms, Progress, and Perspectives

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) have been considered as promising candidates for large-scale energy storage devices due to environmental friendliness, abundant resources, high safety, and low cost. However, Zn anodes suffer from inevitable problems including dendrite growth, hydrogen evolution reaction, corrosion, passivation, and low Zn utilization rate. Due to the excellent electrical conductivity, inherent electrochemical stability, and intrinsic zincophilic characteristic, Cu-based materials are widely applied as protective interfaces and current collectors in modifying the Zn anodes to resolve the above-mentioned challenges. Unfortunately, relevant review on understanding of the design principles for Cu-based materials is still lacking. This review systematically summarizes recent progress of Cu-based materials for Zn anodes from the aspects of fundamental mechanisms, design strategies, and applications of Cu-based materials as interfacial modification layers and current collectors in detail. Finally, the opportunities and challenges for obtaining advanced Cu-based architectures are outlined, which could provide scientific guidance for the structure design of Zn anodes and facilitate further development for practical applications.