Advances and Perspectives of Cathode Storage Chemistry in Aqueous Zinc-Ion Batteries

Rechargeable aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) have captured a surge of interest in recent years as a promising alternative for scalable energy storage applications owing to the intrinsic safety, affordability, environmental benignity, and impressive electrochemical performance. Despite the facilitated development of this technology by many investigations, however, its smooth implementation is still plagued by inadequate energy density and undesirable life span, which calls for an efficient and controllable cathode storage chemistry. Here, this review focuses on the key bottlenecks by offering a comprehensive summary of representative cathode materials and comparatively analyzing their structural features and electrochemical properties. Then, we critically present several feasible electrode design strategies to guide future research activities from a fundamental perspective for high-energy-density and durable cathode materials mainly in terms of interlayer regulation, defect engineering, multiple redox reactions, activated two-electron reactions, and electrochemical activation and conversion. Finally, we outline the remaining challenges and future perspectives of developing high-performance AZIBs.