Surface Control Behavior toward Crystal Regulation and Anticorrosion Capacity for Zinc Metal Anodes

The commercial application of high-safety aqueous zinc (Zn) secondary batteries is hindered by the poor cycling life of Zn metal anodes. Here we propose a dendrite growth and hydrogen evolution corrosion reaction mechanism from the binding energy of the deposited crystal plane on the Zn surface and the adsorption energy of H 2 O molecules on different crystal planes as well as the binding energy of H 2 O molecules with Zn 2+ ions. The biomass-based alkyl polyglucoside (APG) surfactant is adopted as an electrolyte additive of 0.15% to regulate the preferential growth of a parallel Zn(002) plane and enhance the anticorrosion ability of Zn metal anodes. The robust binding and adsorption energies of APG with Zn 2+ ions in the aqueous electrolyte and the Zn(002) plane on Zn surface generate a synergistic effect to increase the concentration of Zn 2+ ions on the APG-adsorbed Zn(002) plane, endowing the continuous growth of the preferential parallel Zn(002) plane and the excellent anticorrosion capacity. Accordingly, the long-term cycle stability of 4000 h can be achieved for Zn anodes with APG additives, which is better than that with pure ZnSO 4 electrolyte. With the addition of APG in the anolyte electrolyte, Zn-I 2 full cells display excellent cycling performance (70 mAh g –1 after 20000 cycles) as compared with that without APG additives.