Recasting zinc electrodes into sponge form factors enables dendrite-free, rechargeable zinc batteries. Prior versions of these electrodes suffer from poor volumetric capacity and insufficient mechanical strength to scale beyond a few square centimeters. Most approaches to fortify zinc electrodes involve adding supportive inactive materials that decrease capacity. In contrast, we boost electrode strength through zinc/zinc-oxide fabrication advances that increase capacity. The resulting electrodes reach a tensile strength of 1 MPa, which now affords large-format scaling of zinc sponges. The tuned architecture achieves a 102% increase in rechargeable volumetric capacity over previously reported electrodes, yielding 928 mAh cm_Zn^–3 in a nickel–zinc battery cycled 115 times with a coulombic efficiency near 100%. These advances in strength, scalability, manufacturability, and rechargeable capacity expand Zn-battery capabilities for a variety of applications including grid storage, personal electronics, and electric vehicles.

将锌电极重铸成海绵形状的元件可实现无枝晶的可充电锌电池。这些电极的先前版本遭受差的体积容量和不足以超过几平方厘米缩放的机械强度。强化锌电极的大多数方法都涉及添加降低容量的支撑性惰性材料。相反，我们通过增加容量的锌/氧化锌制造工艺来提高电极强度。所得的电极达到1 MPa的抗张强度，现在可以对锌海绵进行大尺寸缩放。经过调整的体系结构使可充电体积比以前报道的电极增加了102％，产生928 mAh cm _Zn ^–3在镍锌电池中循环了115次，库仑效率接近100％。强度，可扩展性，可制造性和可充电容量方面的这些进步扩展了Zn电池的功能，可用于各种应用，包括网格存储，个人电子产品和电动汽车。