Enhancing the Kinetics of Zinc Ion Deposition by Catalytic Ion in Polymer Electrolytes for Advanced Zn–MnO2 Batteries

Abstract The practicality of zinc‐ion batteries (ZIBs) is compromise seriously because of the mutual restrictions of hydrogen evolution, by‐product formation and zincdendrite growth. Herein, anhydrous gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs) with catalytic ions and in situdomain‐constrained zinc ions are designed. Innovatively, copper ions are confined in the network structure of the gel for accelerating the deposition and migration kinetics of zinc ions. Not only does this anhydrous GPEs exhibit strong mechanicaland thermal properties, but it also presents a high ionic conductivity (24.32 mS cm −1 ) and a high zinc ion transference number (0.42). Consequently, the anhydrous GPEs is capable of stable cycling of symmetrical Zn cells at 1 mA cm −2 with acumulative capacity of 1000 mAh cm −2 and maintaines a high discharge specific capacity of 124.6 mAh g −1 after 1000 long‐term cycles of the Zn‐MnO 2 battery (ZMB) at 1 C. The synergistic catalytic strategy of composite gel opens new opportunities for a promising pathway to facilitate the large‐scale application of ZIBs with hydrogel electrolytes.