Trivalent Indium Metal as a High-Capacity, High-Efficiency, Low-Polarization, and Long-Cycling Anode for Aqueous Batteries

Aqueous batteries using multivalent metals hold great promise for energy storage due to their low cost, high energy, and high safety. Presently, divalent metals (zinc, iron, nickel, and manganese) prevail as the leading choice, which, however, suffer from low Coulombic efficiency or dendrite growth. In stark contrast, trivalent metals have received rare attention despite their capability to unlock unique redox reactions. Herein, we investigate trivalent indium as an innovative and high-performance metal anode for aqueous batteries. The three-electron In3+/In redox endows a high capacity of ∼700 mAh g-1, on par with the Zn metal. Besides, indium exhibits a suitable redox potential (-0.34 V vs standard hydrogen electrode) and dendrite-free plating process, which renders an ultrahigh Coulombic efficiency of 99.3-99.8%. More surprisingly, it features an exceedingly low polarization of 1 mV in symmetrical cells, which is 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than any reported metals. The In-MnO2 full cell also delivers impressive performance, with a cell voltage of ∼1.2 V, a high capacity of ∼330 mAh g-1, and a long cycling time of 680 cycles. Our work exemplifies the efficacy of exploiting trivalent metals as an excellent metal anode, which provides an exciting direction for building high-performance aqueous batteries.