Amine-Functionalized Carbon Cloth Host for Dendrite-Free Zn Metal Anodes

Zinc-based batteries have ushered in the recent times due to their high theoretical capacity, low-cost, and great safety. However, the severe dendrite growth of Zn anodes has restricted their further development. In this work, an amine-functionalized carbon cloth (CC) was fabricated and adopted as the host to prepare a dendrite-free Zn anode. Experimental results and density functional theoretical calculations demonstrate that the amine functionalization not only improves the binding energy between the Zn atoms and CC but also inhibits the Zn atom adsorption-induced decrease of conductivity. As a result, the dendrite-suppressed anode enjoys stable voltage profiles over 250 h at a current density of 0.5 mA cm–2 in a symmetrical half-cell, which is nearly five times as long as that of the conventional Zn anode. Consequently, the Zn/MnO2 full-cell modified with the amine-functionalized CC shows an excellent capacity retention of 94.0% with a Coulombic efficiency of 93.6% after 6800 cycles.