When It's Heavier: Interfacial and Solvation Chemistry of Isotopes in Aqueous Electrolytes for Zn‐ion Batteries
Xuan Gao, Yuhang Dai, Chengyi Zhang, Yixuan Zhang, Wei Zong, Wei Zhang, Ruwei Chen, Jiexin Zhu, Xueying Hu, Mingyue Wang, Ruizhe Chen, Zijuan Du, Fei Guo, Haobo Dong, Yiyang Liu, Hongzhen He, Siyu Zhao, Fangjia Zhao, Jianwei Li, Ivan P. Parkin, Claire J. Carmalt, Guanjie He
Abstract
Abstract The electrochemical effect of isotope (EEI) of water is introduced in the Zn‐ion batteries (ZIBs) electrolyte to deal with the challenge of severe side reactions and massive gas production. Due to the low diffusion and strong coordination of ions in D 2 O, the possibility of side reactions is decreased, resulting in a broader electrochemically stable potential window, less pH change, and less zinc hydroxide sulfate (ZHS) generation during cycling. Moreover, we demonstrate that D 2 O eliminates the different ZHS phases generated by the change of bound water during cycling because of the consistently low local ion and molecule concentration, resulting in a stable interface between the electrode and electrolyte. The full cells with D 2 O‐based electrolyte demonstrated more stable cycling performance which displayed ∼100 % reversible efficiencies after 1,000 cycles with a wide voltage window of 0.8–2.0 V and 3,000 cycles with a normal voltage window of 0.8–1.9 V at a current density of 2 A g −1 .