With advantages such as high theoretical capacity, low cost, and nontoxicity, Zn metal has been widely investigated as an anode for aqueous batteries. However, the problems of dendrite formation and sustained corrosion originating from severe interfacial side reactions and uncontrolled Zn electrodeposition in aqueous electrolytes significantly slows down the practical application of Zn metal anodes. To address these issues, herein, an anti‐corrosion elastic constraint (AEC) is introduced that is built with nanosized TiO2 and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) matrix to Zn anode, where the PVDF layer serves as an elastic H2O/O2‐blocking layer and the decorated TiO2 nanoparticles assist uniform Zn electrodeposition. With this corrosion‐inhibition and electrodeposition‐redirection coating, the electrodeposition consistency and thermodynamic stability of the Zn anode are significantly improved, enabling a long‐term stable plating/stripping performance for 2000 h with an ultralow overpotential (<50 mV) and a high average Coulombic efficiency (>99.4%) for 1000 cycles without obvious dendrite formation. Even at a high current density of 8.85 mA cm−2 with limited Zn supply (DODZn = 60%), stable Zn deposition is achieved over 250 h. When coupled with a MnO2 cathode, the AEC‐Zn anode shows a remarkably enhanced full‐cell cycling stability, indicative of high reliability of aqueous Zn batteries for practical application.
Flexible
metal electrodes are essential for flexible electronics,
where the main challenge is to obtain mask-free patterned metals directly
on substrates such as poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) at low cost. This
work highlights a feasible strategy named femtosecond laser-activated
metal deposition for electroless deposition of metals (Cu, Ni, Ag,
and Au) on PDMS, which is suitable for maskless and low-cost fabrication
of metal layers on PDMS and even on other materials of different natures
including polyethylene terephthalate, paper, Si, and glass. The electrical
conductivity of the PDMS/Cu electrode is comparable to that of bulk
Cu. Moreover, robust bonding at the PDMS/Cu interface is evidenced
by a scotch tape test and bending test of more than 20,000 cycles.
Compared with previous studies using a nanosecond laser, the restriction
on absorbing sensitizers could be alleviated, and catalysts could
originate from precursors without polymer substrates under a femtosecond
laser, which may be attributed to nonlinear absorption and ultrashort
heating time with the femtosecond laser. Implementing a human–machine
interface task is demonstrated by recognizing hand gestures via a
multichannel electrode array with high fidelity to control a robot
hand.
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