Electrostatic Shielding Regulation of Magnetron Sputtered Al-Based Alloy Protective Coatings Enables Highly Reversible Zinc Anodes
Jiaxian Zheng, Zihao Huang, Ye Zeng, Wanqiang Liu, Binbin Wei, Zhengbing Qi, Zhoucheng Wang, Chuan Xia, Hanfeng Liang
Abstract
The uncontrolled zinc dendrite growth during plating leads to quick battery failure, which hinders the widespread applications of aqueous zinc-ion batteries. The growth of Zn dendrites is often promoted by the “tip effect”. In this work, we propose a generate strategy to eliminate the “tip effect” by utilizing the electrostatic shielding effect, which is achieved by coating Zn anodes with magnetron sputtered Al-based alloy protective layers. The Al can form a surface insulating Al2O3 layer and by manipulating the Al content of Zn–Al alloy films, we are able to control the strength of the electrostatic shield, therefore realizing a long lifespan of Zn anodes up to 3000 h at a practical operating condition of 1.0 mA cm–2 and 1.0 mAh cm–2. In addition, the concept can be extended to other Al-based systems such as Ti–Al alloy and achieve enhanced stability of Zn anodes, demonstrating the generality and efficacy of our strategy.