Understanding the Organic Intercalation for Aqueous Zinc-Ion Battery: From Interlayer Structure to Properties and Future Perspectives

Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) have garnered considerable attention as a promising energy storage device owing to their high theoretical capacity, abundant reserves, environmental friendliness, and excellent safety performance. However, in the current investigation of cathode materials for AZIBs, layered materials exhibit serious structural degradation, sluggish diffusion kinetics, and unsatisfactory cycling stability during repeated charge–discharge processes. These limitations severely hamper the practical implementation of layered materials, making the exploration of high-performance layered cathodes a huge challenge. In recent years, organic intercalation strategies have provided effective solutions to these challenges in the field of interlayer engineering. This review focuses on the synthesis and intercalation mechanism of small organic molecules (EDA, DP, pAP, etc.) and conductive polymers (PANI, PPy, PEDOT, etc.) for enhancing the storage performance of zinc ions in layered electrode materials. Finally, we summarized two intercalation strategies: the primary challenges encountered and further development prospects of organic intercalation.