Oxygen Vacancies ZnO_1-x as Anode Materials for Superior-Performance Zinc-Nickel Alkaline Batteries

Zinc-nickel (Zn-Ni) alkaline batteries have appealedextensiveresearch interest due to their low cost, high safety, and high energydensity, which are favorable competitors in zinc-based batteries.Herein, we prepared ZnO with oxygen vacancies by simple hydrothermaland high temperature reduction annealing as anode materials for Zn-Nialkaline batteries. In comparison with pristine ZnO, the introductionof oxygen vacancies not only improves the electronic conductivityof the material but also effectively provides more active sites forthe reaction and lowers the ion transport energy barrier, thus improvingthe electrochemical reaction kinetics of ZnO1-x . A variety of experimental results and density functionaltheory calculations show that ZnO1-x has good electrochemical properties. Consequently, the synthesizedZnO(1-x ) anode material exhibitsa specific capacity of 590 mA h g(-1) at 5 C (90%retention over 800 cycles) and excellent rate performance (612 mAh g(-1) at 10 C). Significantly, this work providesnew insights into the development of anode materials for long cyclelife and high rate performance.