Zinc-Ion Storage Mechanism of Polyaniline for Rechargeable Aqueous Zinc-Ion Batteries

Aqueous multivalent ion batteries, especially aqueous zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs), have promising energy storage application due to their unique merits of safety, high ionic conductivity, and high gravimetric energy density. To improve their electrochemical performance, polyaniline (PANI) is often chosen to suppress cathode dissolution. Herein, this work focuses on the zinc ion storage behavior of a PANI cathode. The energy storage mechanism of PANI is associated with four types of protonated/non-protonated amine or imine. The PANI cathode achieves a high capacity of 74 mAh g-1 at 0.3 A g-1 and maintains 48.4% of its initial discharge capacity after 1000 cycles. It also demonstrates an ultrahigh diffusion coefficient of 6.25 × 10-9~7.82 × 10-8 cm-2 s-1 during discharging and 7.69 × 10-10~1.81 × 10-7 cm-2 s-1 during charging processes, which is one or two orders of magnitude higher than other reported studies. This work sheds a light on developing PANI-composited cathodes in rechargeable aqueous ZIBs energy storage devices.