Hierarchical micro-mesoporous carbon firmly confined iodine for high performance zinc-iodine batteries

Aqueous rechargeable zinc-iodine battery is a hot research topic in energy storage devices. However, limited by iodine dissolution and polyiodide ions shuttle, zinc-iodine cells suffer from severe degradation of the performance. In this paper, we realized high-performance aqueous zinc-iodine batteries by anchoring iodine on hierarchical micro-mesoporous carbon nanospheres (HMMC NSs) with homogeneous pore distribution. The unique hierarchical micro-mesoporous structure provides high immobilization capacity, effectively inhibiting iodine dissolution and polyiodide ions shuttling. When applying the HMMC-I2 NSs as the cathode of zinc-iodine battery, it shows superior cycling capability.