Development of high-performance zinc-ion batteries: Issues, mitigation strategies, and perspectives

Zn-ion batteries (ZIBs) continue to attract attention for commercial grid storage systems and as alternatives to lithium-ion batteries owing to their safety, environmental friendliness, relatively high volumetric energy density, material availability, and lower production cost. Unfortunately, issues such as dendrite formation at the anode, cathode dissolution, and parasitic side reactions (such as hydrogen evolution and corrosion reactions) continue to plague this battery technology, thus hindering its practical application. In this review, we provide an in-depth understanding of the current issues that affect zinc-ion batteries and comprehensively discuss the issues affecting zinc anodes, cathodes, and electrolytes. Further, the current research focusing on mitigating these issues has been scrutinized. This review article presents recent perspectives on zinc-ion batteries regarding factors such as environmental friendliness, cost of development, and enhancing the cycle life of zinc-ion batteries to guide the future development of high-performance zinc-ion batteries.