Nitrogen‐Doped Carbon Fibers Embedded with Zincophilic Cu Nanoboxes for Stable Zn‐Metal Anodes

Abstract

The practical application of Zn‐metal anodes (ZMAs) is mainly impeded by the limited lifespan and low Coulombic efficiency (CE) resulting from the Zn dendrite growth and side reactions. Herein, a 3D multifunctional host consisting of N‐doped carbon fibers embedded with Cu nanoboxes (denoted as Cu NBs@NCFs) is rationally designed and developed for stable ZMAs. The 3D macroporous configuration and hollow structure can lower the local current density and alleviate the large volume change during the repeated cycling processes. Furthermore, zincophilic Cu and in‐situ‐formed Cu–Zn alloy can act as homogeneous nucleation sites to minimize the Zn nucleation overpotential, further guiding uniform and dense Zn deposition. As a result, this Cu NBs@NCFs host exhibits high CE of Zn plating/stripping for 1000 cycles. The Cu NBs@NCFs–Zn electrode shows low voltage hysteresis and prolonged cycling life (450 h) with dendrite‐free behaviors. As a proof‐of‐concept demonstration, a Zn‐ion full cell is fabricated based on this Cu NBs@NCFs–Zn anode, which demonstrates decent rate capability and improved cycling performance.

Methods for Rational Design of Advanced Zn‐Based Batteries

“…Recently, Lou et al designed a 3D N-doped carbon frameworks embedded with Cu nanoboxes or Sn nanoparticles (denoted as Cu NBs@NCFs or Sn@NHCF) to stabilize the Zn plating/stripping. [114,115] The SN@ NHCFs were fabricated through an hard-templating strategy, in which the zincophilic Sn nanoparticles were embedded in the N-doped hollow carbon spheres (Figure 9a). Benefiting from the 3D macroporous configuration and zincophilic nature of Sn, the as-prepared 3D host not only alleviated the large volume change during the charging/discharging processes, but also lowered Zn nucleation overpotential (Figure 9b-d).…”

Practical Zn anodes enabled by a Ti-MOF-derived coating for aqueous batteries

“…1k, the N 1s band can be fitted by two sub-peaks assigned to pyridinic N (398.4 eV) and pyrrolic N (400.7 eV), respectively. 32 The specific surface area of TiO 2 /NC is 138 m 2 g −1 , given by our Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) measurement. This is larger than that of commercial TiO 2 nanoparticles (∼50 m 2 g −1 ).…”

Advances in the structure and composition design of zinc anodes for high performance zinc ion batteries

“…So, integrating a small amount of the zincophilic metal seed in the lightweight carbon skeleton will be a facile and effective approach to achieve great performance of ZIBs. 105,106 For instance, AgNPs@CC was fabricated by inkjet printing silver nanoparticles on 3D carbon cloth (Fig. 9a).…”