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.

The ether electrolytes usually outperform ester electrolytes by evaluating sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) rate performance, which is a near-unanimous conclusion of previous studies based on an essential configuration of the half-cell test. However, here we find that contrary to consensus, the ester electrolyte shows better Na storage capability than the ether electrolyte in full cells. An in-depth analysis of three-electrode, symmetric cell, and in situ XRD tests indicates that traditional half-cell test results are unreliable due to interference from Na electrodes. In particular, Na electrodes show a huge stability difference in ester and ether electrolytes, and ester electrolytes suffer more severe interference than ether electrolytes, resulting in the belief that esters are far inferior to ether electrolytes. More seriously, the more accurate three-electrode test would also suffer from Na electrode interference. Thus, a "corrected half-cell test" protocol is developed to shield the Na electrode interference, revealing the very close super rate capability of hard carbon in ester and ether electrolytes. This work breaks the inherent perception that the kinetic properties of ester electrolytes are inferior to ethers in sodium-ion batteries, reveals the pitfalls of half-cell tests, and proposes a new test protocol for reliable results, greatly accelerating the commercialization of sodium-ion batteries.