Construction of Phosphorus-Functionalized Multichannel Carbon Interlayers for Dendrite-Free Metallic Zn Anodes

Zn metal anodes are usually subject to grave dendrite growth during platting/stripping, which dramatically curtails the lifespan of aqueous Zn-ion batteries and capacitors. To address above problems, in our work, a novel phosphorus-functionalized multichannel carbon interlayer was designed and covered on Zn anodes. The results demonstrated that the multichannel structure combined with the three-dimensional meshy skeleton can provide more sufficient space for Zn deposition, thereby effectively inhibiting the growth of zinc dendrites. Meanwhile, theoretical calculations also confirmed that the P–C and P=O functional groups from phosphorus-functionalized multichannel carbon interlayer have the decisive influence in reducing the zinc nucleation potential and depositing uniformly zinc. Concretely, the symmetrical battery assembled with phosphorus-functionalized multichannel carbon interlayer-covered Zn anodes possessed a long lifetime of 3300 h at 2 mA cm⁻² with 1 mAh cm⁻². Furthermore, the full cell with activated carbon cathodes exhibited a high specific capacity of 80.5 mAh g⁻¹ and outstanding cycling stability without capacity decay after 15000 cycles at a high current density of 5 A g⁻¹. The superior electrochemical performance exceeded that of most reported papers. Consequently, our synthesized zincophilic interlayer with the unique structure has superior prospects for application in stabilizing zinc anodes and prolonging the lifespan of batteries.