Scalable Construction of Multifunctional Protection Layer with Low-Cost Water Glass for Robust and High-Performance Zinc Anode

Abstract

Zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) have recently attracted tremendous interest for being low-cost, environmentally benign, and high energy density. However, the large-scale practical application of ZIBs is hampered by well-known undesirable dendrite growth and serious side reactions of the Zn anode during the long-term cycling process. Herein, a multifunctional water-glass artificial protection layer with enormous Si─O functional groups is constructed on Zn anode through a simple spin-coating method. The theoretical and experimental investigation suggests that the as-constructed interface with rich Si─O hydrophilic functional groups on Zn anode could facilitate the even distribution of electric field distribution and homogeneous wettability, navigate uniform zinc deposition/stripping along the (002) plane, and subsequently lead to well-suppressed dendrite growth and effective prohibition of oxygen-involved corrosion. Consequently, the water glass-modified anode achieves highly reversible Zn plating/stripping over 1500 h at a high current density of 10 mA cm−2 in symmetrical cells, and a high capacity retention ratio of 79.4% at the current density of 5 A g−1 in full cells paired with V2O5 cathode. This proposed water glass coating layer design is cheap, up-scalable, and facile, which could substantially accelerate the rapid commercialization of zinc anodes and unleash the full potential of renewable ZIBs for next-generation large-scale energy storage.