High-mass-loading NiCo-LDH hollow nanoflower for high-performance alkaline aqueous zinc batteries

Abstract

Nickel/cobalt-based materials are promising cathodes owing to the high redox potential, high specific capacity, and long cycling performance. However, with the mass-loading of the electrode increasing, it greatly hinders the ion diffusion and charge transport, resulting in serious decrease of the electrode capacity. Herein, a hierarchical nickel-cobalt-based porous nanoflower structure (NiCo-Nanoflower) composed of numerous ultrathin nanosheets is synthesized, which significantly enhances the surface area and provides additional active sites. Besides, the abundant oxygen defects in NiCo-Nanoflower significantly enhance its electrical conductivity. Therefore, the NiCo-Nanoflower electrode exhibits a high reversible capacity of up to 210.4 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.5 A g⁻¹ and excellent rate retention of 180.4 mAh g⁻¹ at 8 A g⁻¹ (104 mA cm⁻²) even under high areal mass loading of 13 mg cm⁻². Upon assembly in a NiCo//Zn battery system, the configuration demonstrates exceptional electrochemical stability, maintaining 74.3% capacity retention after 5000 cycles. This work demonstrates that NiCo-Nanoflower, equipped with three-dimensional microstructure and oxygen-enriched defects, holds significant potential for application in high-mass-loading cathodes for alkaline aqueous zinc batteries.

Keywords

Aqueous zinc battery / High-mass-loading / Alkaline electrolyte / NiCo-LDH cathode / Hollow nanoflower

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Huihe Gao: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Investigation, Data curation. Na Li: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Formal analysis. Chuanlin Li: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Formal analysis. Xixi Zhang: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Formal analysis. Wenjie Liu: Writing – review & editing, Methodology, Formal analysis. Jing Sun: Methodology, Formal analysis. Qingxiu Yu: Methodology, Formal analysis. Jiawei Zhu: Methodology, Formal analysis. Chenggang Wang: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Methodology, Formal analysis. Xijin Xu: Writing – review & editing, Supervision, Resources, Project administration.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U22A20140), University of Jinan Disciplinary Cross-Convergence Construction Project 2023 (No. XKJC-202309), Jinan City-School Integration Development Strategy Project (No. JNSX2023015), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 22409071), Natural Foundation of Shandong Province (No. ZR2024QB120). Youth Innovation Group Plan of Shandong Province (No. 2024KJG046). Higher-Level Talent Initial Scientific Research and Discipline Construction Fund (511/1009530).

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