Reversible zinc-based anodes enabled by zincophilic antimony engineered MXene for stable and dendrite-free aqueous zinc batteries

Abstract Rechargeable zinc(Zn)-based batteries are promising power sources due to their low cost and safety characters. However, Zn dendrites and side reactions restrict the practical application of Zn metal anode. In this work, multifunctional uniform antimony (Sb) nanoarrays are designed and grown on Ti3C2Tx MXene paper. It is found that antimony can reversibly alloy with Zn to form ZnSb phase, which enable antimony as both alloying-type Zn storage material and zincophilic nucleation seed to regulate homogeneous Zn deposition. Optimized freestanding MXene@Sb electrode deliver 299.6 mAh g − 1 capacity over 200 cycles at 50 mA g − 1 based on the formation ZnSb phase and maintain 148.43 mAh g − 1 capacity after 1000 cycles at 500 mA g − 1, proving that zinc can alloy with antimony. Benefiting from the zincophilic antimony seeds and 3D MXene architecture, the MXene@Sb can significantly suppress Zn dendrite and achieve a long cycling life up to 1000 h. This study demonstrates the feasibility of antimony as alloying-type Zn storage anode and provides an effective approach to suppress Zn dendrites.