Room temperature chemical vapor deposition-derived organic-inorganic artificial interphase for dendrite-free and long-life Zn metal anode

The efficient utilization of zinc metal anode in rechargeable batteries is plagued by severe parasitic reactions and dendritic growth, which lowers its Coulombic efficiency and lifetime. To alleviate these issues, herein, an organic-inorganic artificial interphase is coated on the Zn surface via a simple room-temperature chemical vapor deposition route. The spontaneous reaction between Zn metal and trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) renders excellent adhesion to this artificial coating and its organic and inorganic functional groups homogenizes the zinc ion flux across the interface and produces uniform zinc deposition. Accordingly, the coated zinc anode displays long cycle life (950 h at 5 mA cm-2 in Zn|Cu cell and 1850 h at 10 mA cm-2 in Zn|Zn cell) with low overpotential and high Coulombic efficiency of -99.7 %. More significantly, the practical utilization of coated Zn is also demonstrated in ZnMn2O4-based full cell with excellent rate performance and cycling stability.