Progress and Future Prospect of Electrolyte Additives in Aqueous Zinc‐Ion Battery

ABSTRACT

Aqueous zinc‐ion batteries (AZIBs) have been regarded as a strong candidate for a new generation of electrochemical energy storage systems because of their high safety, environmental friendliness, low cost and relatively high energy density. However, there are still many challenges for practical application, especially the uncontrolled growth of zinc dendrites, zinc corrosion, and the hydrogen evolution reaction, which seriously restrict the cycle stability of AZIBs. Focusing on the above problems, researchers have presented zinc anode surface/interface engineering, zinc anode morphology/structure design, and electrolyte optimization to improve the service life. Electrolyte additives as an effective means of electrolyte optimization can effectively inhibit the growth of zinc dendrite by optimizing the composition of electrolyte and regulating the deposition and stripping process of zinc ions. In recent years, researchers have made remarkable progress in this field. Here, we review recent research progress on electrolyte additives in AZIBs, including inorganic additives (inorganic salts/other inorganic materials), organic additives (amino acids and their derivatives/polysaccharides and macromolecular compounds/biomacromolecules/organic acids and their salts/small molecular salts of organic compounds/heterocyclic organic compounds), surfactants (anionic and cationic surfactants), and ionic liquids. Importantly, we discuss the effect of different additives on the zinc anode in depth and give the future research direction in this field, aiming to expand the understanding of the intrinsic relationship between the properties of electrolyte additives and their action mechanisms and provide a valuable reference for the development of high‐performance AZIBs.