Title: Electrostatic Shielding Regulation of Magnetron Sputtered Al-Based Alloy Protective Coatings Enables Highly Reversible Zinc Anodes

Authors: Jiaxian Zheng, Zihao Huang, Ye Zeng, Wanqiang Liu*, Binbin Wei, Zhengbing Qi*, Zhoucheng Wang, Chuan Xia, and 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.

Full-Link: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03917