Guiding the Crystal Orientation to Coordinate Zinc Deposition for High-durable Zinc-ion Batteries

Abstract

The Zn(002) texture deposition with high thermodynamic stability is considered to be an efficient approach for mitigating dendrite growth and side reactions. However, attaining (002) plane-oriented Zn deposition is difficult because of significant lattice deformation and non-uniform electric field distribution. Herein, an electrolyte containing N, N-diethylchloroacetamide (CDEA) is proposed to regulate the epitaxial deposition of Zn2+. The CDEA molecule exhibits the preferential adsorption on Zn(101) via the polar -C=O group in CDEA, thereby promoting the predominant exposure of the Zn2+ plane with the lowest deposition rate on Zn(101), which in turn facilitates uniform Zn deposition along the Zn(101) orientation. Consequently, the asymmetrical Zn//Cu cell has exceptional cycling stability, exceeding 1700 cycles with an average coulombic efficiency (CE) of up to 99.72%. Moreover, the Zn//VO2 full cell can stably maintain a high specific capacity of 245.5 mAh g−1 even after 4000 cycles. The current work sheds new light on how to generate dendrite-free Zn anodes using crystal plane manipulation techniques.