Cover Picture: The Three‐Dimensional Dendrite‐Free Zinc Anode on a Copper Mesh with a Zinc‐Oriented Polyacrylamide Electrolyte Additive (Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 44/2019)

Abstract

Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries have been considered as a promising candidate for next-generation batteries. However, the formation of zinc dendrites are the most severe problems limiting their practical applications. To develop stable zinc metal anodes, we first report a synergistic method combining Cu-Zn solid solution interface on copper mesh skeleton with good zinc affinity and polyacrylamide electrolyte additive to modify the zinc anode, which can greatly reduce the overpotential of the zinc nucleation and increase the stability of zinc deposition. The as-prepared zinc anodes show a dendrite-free plating/stripping behavior in a wide range of current densities. The symmetric cell using this dendrite-free anode can be cycled for more than 280 h with a very low voltage hysteresis (93.1 mV) at the discharge depth of 80%. The high capacity retention and low polarization are also realized in Zn/MnO2 full cells.