Citation: Yang Yu, Yi-Yang Bi, Yu-Hang Liu, Bin Yue, Ming-Xuan Duan, Yu-Chun Wan, Wan-Qiang Liu, Gang Huang. Constructing H₂O-locking structure of the double hydrogen bond network for reversible zinc metal anode[J]. Chinese Chemical Letters, ;2026, 37(9): 112540. doi: 10.1016/j.cclet.2026.112540 shu

Constructing H₂O-locking structure of the double hydrogen bond network for reversible zinc metal anode

Yang Yu ^{a, b, 1} ,
Yi-Yang Bi ^{a, 1} ,
Yu-Hang Liu ^a ,
Bin Yue ^b ,
Ming-Xuan Duan ^a ,
Yu-Chun Wan ^{a, *,} ,
Wan-Qiang Liu ^{a, *,} ,
Gang Huang ^{c, *,}

a.
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Changchun University of Science and Technology, Changchun 130000, China
b.
School of Chemistry, Tonghua Normal University, Tonghua 134000, China
c.
State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, China

wanyuchun@126.com

wqliu1979@126.com

ghuang@ciac.ac.cn

Received Date: 19 January 2026
Revised Date: 26 January 2026
Accepted Date: 23 February 2026
Available Online: 23 February 2026

Figures(6)

Zinc anode as one of the most promising energy storage materials for aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs), suffer from significant degradation in cycle life and Coulombic efficiency (CE) due to uncontrolled dendrite growth and H₂O-induced side reactions. In this work, we propose a nonionic dual-additive (gelatin, urea, abbreviated as GU) strategy that utilizes the dual hydrogen bond (H-bond) network H₂O-locking structure. Due to the H-bond reinforcement effect introduced by the GU additive, the energy barrier for H-bond breaking and reconfiguration is elevated, effectively impeding the rapid proton shuttling between H₂O molecules. It can induce the preferred growth of the (002) crystal plane by adsorbing onto other crystal planes, thereby achieving a dendrite-free zinc anode. Thus, the stability and reversibility of the zinc anode have improved significantly. The symmetrical cells stably cycled for more than 2100 h at 2.0 mA/cm²@1.0 mA/cm², and the ZnCu asymmetric cells cycled for 1600 times at 5 mA/cm²@1 mAh/cm² with an average CE of 99.4%. The full cells matched with the PANI cathode cycled more than 3500 times at 1 A/g. The work provides a new strategy for regulating the interfacial chemistry of zinc anodes to achieve highly stable high-performance zinc batteries.
- Zinc metal anode,
- Aqueous zinc-ion batteries,
- Dendrite suppression,
- Double H-bond H₂O-locking structure,
- Uniform deposition
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Constructing H2O-locking structure of the double hydrogen bond network for reversible zinc metal anode

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通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com

Constructing H₂O-locking structure of the double hydrogen bond network for reversible zinc metal anode