Sn Penetrated Zincophilic Interface Design in Porous Zn Substrate for High Performance Zn-Ion Battery

Rechargeable zinc-ion batteries are considered an ideal energy storage system due to their low cost and nonflammable aqueous electrolyte. However, dendrite growth, hydrogen evolution reaction, and self-corrosion of zinc anode brought about serious safety risks including short circuits and electrode expansion. Therefore, a modified host-design strategy with a 3D porous structure and bulk-phase penetrated zincophilic interface is proposed to boost the stability and lifetime of the Zn anode. The porous Zn substrate is constructed by universal HCl etching and the uniform and tight Sn-penetrated zincophilic interface is formed by effective electron beam evaporation (EBE). The porous substrate can uniform zinc ion flux and the Sn coating could effectively improve zinc ion deposition behavior, thus inhibiting the risk of dendrites growth and side reaction. As a result, the 3D Zn substrate with Sn interface (3D Zn@Sn) exhibits prolonged galvanostatic cycling performance up to 4500 h with a low polarization of ≈25 mV (1 mA cm⁻², 1 mAh cm⁻²) in the symmetric cell. The full cell assembled with KVOH@Ti could maintain a high specific capacity of 148.6 mAh g⁻¹ after 500 galvanostatic cycles (10 A g⁻¹). This work proposed an improved electrode design to realize the high performance of zinc ion batteries.