Amorphous nickel borate nanosheets as cathode material with high capacity and better cycling performance for zinc ion battery

Zinc-ion batteries are under current research focus because of their uniqueness in low cost and high safety. However, the pursuing of high-performance cathode materials of aqueous Zinc ion batteries (AZBs) with low cost, high energy density and long cycle life has become the key problem to be solved. Herein we synthesized a series of amorphous nickel borate (AM-NiBO) nanosheets by varying corrosion time with in-situ electrochemical corrosion method. The AM-NiBO-T13 as electrode material possesses a high areal capacity of 0.65 mAh/cm2 with the capacity retention of 95.1% after 2000 cycles. In addition, the assembled AM-NiBO-T13//Zn provides high energy density (0.77 mWh/cm2 at 1.76 mW/cm2). The high areal capacity and better cycling performance can be owing to the amorphous nanosheets structure and the stable coordination characteristics of boron and oxygen in borate materials. It shows that amorphous nickel borate nanosheets have great prospects in the field of energy storage.