Publication

Abstract : Zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) are severely affected by poor Zn stripping/platting behaviour that causing dendrite growth, hydrogen evolution and uncontrollable passivation reaction at the Zn metal anode. To overcome the aforementioned concern and also to construct flexible batteries, high ionic conductivity and mechanically robust hybrid hydrogel electrolytes (HHGE) are used as the best alternatives. Herein, a highly stable 2D-Ti-MXene incorporated Poly(acrylamide-co-acrylic acid) based HHGE is developed by a facile one-step chemical crosslinking method. Among three different concentrations of Ti-MXene (0.1, 0.2 and 0.3 wt.%) incorporated Poly(acrylamide-co-acrylic acid), 0.2 wt.% of Ti-MXene incorporated P(AM-AA) exhibited excellent ionic conductivity of 20.52×10−3 S cm−1 with a wider 2.4 V electrochemical stability window. The as-prepared hybrid hydrogel displays an outstanding tensile strength of 1.6 MPa than pristine (0.4 MPa). Furthermore, the electrochemical performances of stripping/platting clearly demonstrate the dendrite-free behaviour of the Zn-metal anode over the prolonged life span of 1000 h without any short circuits. For the ZIB (Zn//V2O5), it achieved an initial capacity of 174 mAh g−1 at a current density of 0.1 Ag−1 with a remarkable long-term stability over 500 cycles with 100% coulombic efficiency. It also remains stable under different bending conditions, indicating its potential candidate for high-performance flexible ZIB.