Rational design of an organic-anionic electrolyte additive for zinc-ion battery

Abstract

Zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) have drawn a lot of attention due to their high safety and cheap cost. Nevertheless, the Zn dendrite growth and the hydrogen evolution reaction have prevented the large-scale application of ZIBs. To address these issues, herein, an acrylamide (AM) and sodium p-aminobenzenesulfonate (SABS) composite electrolyte additive has been added into ZIBs. The theoretical calculations uphold that SABS can not only access the solvation shell of Zn2+ ions, but also diminish the interaction of H2O molecules. The combination of AM and SABS can attenuate the formation of Zn dendrite. The electrochemical tests manifest that the Zn||Zn battery using the AM and SABS electrolyte additive can be stably charged and discharged for over 1600 h at 2 mA cm-2 , which is much longer than the Zn||Zn battery using pure electrolyte. Moreover, the Zn||KMO battery using the AM and SABS electrolyte additive unfolds a 90.6% of capacity retention after 1200 cycles at 1 A g-1 . Given the stellar modification effect and the simple preparation method, this work can provide notable guidance for improving the cycle life of ZIBs.