A piece of common cellulose paper but with outstanding functions for advanced aqueous zinc-ion batteries

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries are considered to be one of the most promising next-generation large-scale energy storage devices owing to their abundant raw material resources, high safety, and cost-effectiveness. However, the uncontrollable zinc dendrite growth and cathode dissolution severely deteriorate the cycling performance of the batteries, thus hindering their practical application. Herein, we directly implant a commercially available cellulose paper at the glass fiber-zinc anode interface to improve the overall battery performance. The highly zincophobic cellulose paper can induce lateral zinc growth on the surface and alleviate by-product accumulation at the interface by its poor electrolyte affinity and retention. Besides, the nanoporous cellulose paper with abundant hydroxyl groups strongly adsorbs vanadium ions dissolved from the cathode and prevents the shuttle of vanadium ions to the anode interface. As a result, the assembled NH4V4O10//Zn full cell with cellulose paper exhibits an outstanding long cycle life of 850 cycles with the capacity retention of 89% at a current density of 4 A g−1. This strategy offers an emerging avenue to design sustainable and low-cost separators for high-performance aqueous zinc-ion batteries.