Suppressing metal corrosion through identification of optimal crystallographic plane for Zn batteries

Abstract

Direct use of metals as battery anodes could significantly boost the energy density, but suffers from limited cycling. To make the batteries more sustainable, one strategy is mitigating the propensity for metals to form random morphology during plating through orientation regulation, e.g., hexagonal Zn platelets locked horizontally by epitaxial electrodeposition or vertically aligned through Zn/electrolyte interface modulation. Current strategies center around obtaining (002) faceted deposition due to its minimum surface energy. Here, benefiting from the capability of preparing a library of faceted monocrystalline Zn anodes and controlling the orientation of Zn platelet deposits, we challenge this conventional belief. We show that while monocrystalline (002) faceted Zn electrode with horizontal epitaxy indeed promises the highest critical current density, the (100) faceted electrode with vertically aligned deposits is the most important one in suppressing Zn metal corrosion and promising the best reversibility. Such uniqueness results from the lowest electrochemical surface area of (100) faceted electrode, which intrinsically builds upon the surface atom diffusion barrier and the orientation of the pallets. These new findings based on monocrystalline anodes advance the fundamental understanding of electrodeposition process for sustainable metal batteries and provide a paradigm to explore the processing–structure–property relationships of metal electrodes.