Uniform Zinc Deposition Regulated by a Nitrogen-Doped MXene Artificial Solid Electrolyte Interlayer

Jingwan Gao; Xiaoya Zhang; Meiling Wang; Jingyi Qiu; Hao Zhang; Xibang Chen; Yizhan Wang; Yingjin Wei

doi:10.1002/smll.202300633

Uniform Zinc Deposition Regulated by a Nitrogen-Doped MXene Artificial Solid Electrolyte Interlayer

Small. 2023 Jul;19(30):e2300633. doi: 10.1002/smll.202300633. Epub 2023 Apr 10.

Authors

Jingwan Gao¹, Xiaoya Zhang¹, Meiling Wang¹, Jingyi Qiu², Hao Zhang², Xibang Chen², Yizhan Wang^{1

3}, Yingjin Wei^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Physics and Technology for Advanced Batteries (Ministry of Education), College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, 130012, P. R. China.
² Research Institute of Chemical Defence, Beijing, 100191, P. R. China.
³ Chongqing Research Institute, Jilin University, Chongqing, 401123, P. R. China.

PMID: 37035986
DOI: 10.1002/smll.202300633

Abstract

The dendrite growth and side reactions of zinc metal anode in mildly acidic electrolytes seriously hinder the practical application of aqueous zinc-ion battery. To address these issues, an artificial protective layer of nitrogen-doped MXene (NMX) is used to protect the zinc anode. The NMX protective layer has high conductivity and uniformly distributed zincophilic sites, which can not only homogenize the local electric field on the electrode interface but also accelerate the kinetics for Zn deposition. As a result, the NMX protective layer induces uniform zinc deposition and reduces the overpotential of the electrode. Encouragingly, this NMX-protected Zn anode can cycle stably for 1900 h at 1 mA cm^-2 and 1 mAh cm^-2 . In asymmetric cells, it achieves high cycle reversibility with an average Coulomb efficiency of 99.79% for 4800 cycles at 5 mA cm^-2 .

Keywords: MXene; aqueous zinc ion batteries; solid electrolyte interlayers; zinc metal anodes; zincophilics.

Abstract

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