Laser-induced Zinc Metal Battery Anodes with Ultra-long Cycling Performance

Zinc ion batteries show great potential as favorable options for both portable and grid-scale applications due to their inherently high safety, low cost, and relatively high theoretical energy density. However, the flat zinc metal anodes are not capable of long cycling performance owing to severe dendrites formation during the charge-discharge process. In this study, we employed nanosecond laser to modify zinc surface morphology and surface chemistry in order to alleviate the dendrites growth. The results demonstrate that the laser-induced zinc foil (LZF) surfaces show super-hydrophilic property with microstructures and a layer of ZnO coating. The symmetric cells and half-cells investigations indicate that the LZF electrode possesses lower nucleation overpotential and stable plating/striping behavior. Moreover, excellent zinc ion battery performance is achieved with activated carbon (AC) cathode, stably working for 20000 cycles at 2 A/g and 50000 cycles at 10 A/g with the Coulombic efficiency almost 100%. This paper offers new option for laser fabrication of high-performance zinc anodes for Zn-ion batteries.