Zincophilic Group-Rich Aminoglycosides for Ultra-Long Life and High-Rate Zinc Batteries

Abstract

The application of environmentally friendly and economical aqueous zinc (Zn) metal batteries (ZMBs) is severely limited by critical issues associated with Zn anodes, including dendrite growth, hydrogen evolution reaction and corrosion. Hence, many improvement methods, such as electrolyte additives, mainly focus on the protection of Zn anodes. Herein, owing to the abundance of zincophilic functional groups, aminoglycosides represented by amikacin are introduced as sulfates to solve these problems. The presence of zincophilic functional groups, such as amino and hydroxyl, enables amikacin to effectively replace H₂O molecules, thereby altering the solvation structure of Zn²⁺. Additionally, amikacin preferentially adsorbs on the anode surface and facilitates the formation of solid electrolyte interphase (SEI), achieving highly conductive and uniformly deposited Zn anodes. Therefore, the Zn||Zn symmetric cell with the modified electrolyte can work stably with a long cycle lifespan of up to 3300 h at 1 mA cm⁻², 1 mAh cm⁻². It is worth mentioning that the symmetric cells deliver excellent cycle lifespans of 1000 h (5 mA cm⁻², 5 mAh cm⁻²), 790 h (10 mA cm⁻², 10 mAh cm⁻²) and 330 h (20 mA cm⁻², 20 mAh cm⁻²). Besides, the Zn-based full cell, in conjunction with NaV₃O₈·1.5H₂O cathode, also demonstrates exceedingly good cycling stability with a remarkable capacity retention rate of 95.92% after 3000 cycles at 5 A g^-1. More encouragingly, ZMBs supplemented with the other aminoglycoside sulfates, namely gentamicin sulfate (GS) and neomycin sulfate (NS), also show excellent performance, confirming the universality of the improvement by these aminoglycosides.