High-Index Zinc Facet Exposure Induced by Preferentially Orientated Substrate for Dendrite-Free Zinc Anode

The most commonly used zinc foil anode for aqueous zinc-ion batteries suffers from poor cycle stability and low zinc utilization. Zinc-plated anodes on the host materials with high zincophilicity and stability are receiving increasing attention to alleviate these above issues. Here, the high zinc deposition activity of Cu (2 2 0) is confirmed through experimental observations and theoretical calculations and then Cu (2 2 0) substrates are prepared with the highly preferred orientation through an industrial electrolysis strategy. The prepared Cu (2 2 0) substrate can consistently modulate dense zinc growth by inducing the Zn (0 0 1) growth with the lowest surface energy and exposing high-index zinc facets due to its exceptional grain size, high deposition activity, and homogeneous crystal orientation, which result in the high zinc plating/stripping reversibility of this Cu (2 2 0) substrate. When assembled into the Zn//MnO2 battery, the zinc-plated Cu (2 2 0) can deliver capacity retention of 93.9% after 640 cycles at high zinc utilization (approximate to 20%). This scalable orientation design strategy provides a new perspective for realizing dendrite-free metal deposition with special textures.