Crystal plane induced in-situ electrochemical activation of manganese-based cathode enable long-term aqueous zinc-ion batteries

Rapid capacity decay and sluggish reaction kinetics are major barriers hindering the applications of manganese-based cathode materials for aqueous zinc-ion batteries. Herein, the effects of crystal plane on the in-situ transformation behavior and electrochemical performance of manganese-based cathode is discussed. A comprehensive discussion manifests that the exposed (100) crystal plane is beneficial to the phase transformation from tunnel-structured MnO2 to layer-structured ZnMn3O7$3H2O, which plays a critical role for the high reactivity, high capacity, fast diffusion kinetics and long cycling stability. Additionally, a two-stage zinc storage mechanism can be demonstrated, involving continuous activation reaction and phase transition reaction. As expected, it exhibits a high capacity of 275 mAh g-1 at 100 mA g �1, a superior durability over 1000 cycles and good rate capability. This study may open new windows toward developing advanced cathodes for ZIBs, and facilitate the applications of ZIBs in large-scale energy storage system. & COPY; 2023 Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Publishing services by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).