Flexible and Free-Standing Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn Paper for Dendrite-Free Aqueous Zinc Metal Batteries and Nonaqueous Lithium Metal Batteries.

Tian, Yuan; An, Yongling; Wei, Chuanliang; Xi, Baojuan; Xiong, Shenglin; Feng, Jinkui; Qian, Yitai · ACS Nano · 2019

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Dendrite growth of metal anodes is one of the key hindrances for both secondary aqueous metal batteries and nonaqueous metal batteries. In this work, a freestanding Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn paper is designed as both zinc metal anode and lithium metal anode host to address the issue. The binder-free Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn paper exhibits merits of good mechanical flexibility, high electronic conductivity, hydrophilicity, and lithiophilicity. The crystal growth mechanism of Zn metal on common Zn foil and Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn composite is also studied. It is found that the Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn paper can effectively suppress the dendrite growth of Zn, enabling reversible and fast Zn plating/stripping kinetics in an aqueous electrolyte. Moreover, the Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn paper can be used as a 3D host for a lithium metal anode. In this host, Zn is utilized as a nucleation agent to suppress the Li dendrite growth. The freestanding Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<sub><i>x</i></sub> MXene@Zn@Li anode exhibits superior reversibility with high Coulombic efficiency (97.69% over 600 cycles at 1.0 mA cm<sup>-2</sup>) and low polarization compared with the Cu@Li anode. These findings may be useful for the design of dendrite-free metal-based energy storage systems.