Zincophilic Tellurium Interface Layer Enables Fast Kinetics for Ultralow Overpotential and Highly Reversible Zinc Anode

Corrosion, hydrogen evolution, and dendrite formation seriously affect the Zn anode, significantly limiting the practical application of aqueous zinc ion batteries. Herein, the Zn anode surface is innovatively reconstructed by decorating a zincophilic tellurium layer (Te@Zn) to enhance the Zn deposition kinetics. Theoretical calculations and experimental characterizations demonstrate that the zincophilic Te provides an abundance of anchoring sites for Zn nucleation and homogenizes the interface electric field to suppress dendrite growth. The Te@Zn anode exhibits an ultralow overpotential of 14.8 mV at 1.0 mA cm-2 and 1.0 mAh cm-2 with high Coulombic efficiency, and maintains ultra-stable operation for over 3600 h at 0.2 mA cm-2 and 0.2 mAh cm-2. The Te@Zn||KVOH full cells and soft-pack batteries also deliver a brilliant rate capability and long cycling stability. The interfacial manipulation strategy using the Te layer on Zn anode surface paves the way for large-scale energy storage applications. The efficient zincophilic Te interface layer on the surface of Zn anode is designed to improve the performance of Zn anode. The Te interface layer not only enhances the Zn deposition kinetics, but also suppresses Zn dendrite growth and hydrogen evolution reaction, ultimately achieving highly reversible and long-life cycling of Zn anode. image