Regulating Zinc Storage Behaviors of Tunnel Structure Cathodes Via Tungsten Induction

Abstract

AbstractAqueous zinc‐ion batteries have received continuous interests because of applying low‐cost and eco‐friendly aqueous electrolytes and having high safety. Beyond energetically to explore new‐type cathode materials, it is of great significance to regulate the zinc storage behavior of the existing cathodes in order to understand the underlying working mechanism. Therefore, as a proof of concept, this work achieves the regulation of zinc storage behaviors of the tunnel structure tunnel structure B‐phase vanadium dioxide (VO2(B)) and vanadium oxide (V6O13) cathodes via a simple chemical tungsten‐doping induction approach. Under low‐concentration tungsten‐doping induction of 1, 2 and 3 at.%, the tunnel sizes of VO2(B) can be controlled readily. Moreover, the V6O13 with large size tunnels can be achieved by medium‐concentration tungsten induction of 6 and 9 at.%. It is demonstrated that tungsten induced VO2(B) can achieve zinc storage without lattice structure change via operando X‐ray diffraction analyses. Remarkably, via operando and non‐operando analyses, tungsten induced V6O13 with lager size tunnels can realize the oriented 1D zinc ion intercalation/deintercalation. The further kinetics analysis shows that the zinc storage is mainly diffusion control, which is different from most of vanadium‐based cathodes with capacitance control. This viable tungsten‐doping induction strategy provides a new insight into achieving the controllable regulation of zinc storage behaviors.