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Zinc ion batteries have been extensively studied with an aqueous electrolyte system. However, the batteries suffer from a limited potential window, gas evolution, cathode dissolution, and dendrite formation on the anode. Considering these limitations, we developed an alternative electrolyte system based on deep eutectic solvents (DESs) because of their low cost, high stability, biodegradability, and non-flammability, making them optimal candidates for sustainable batteries. The DES electrolyte enables reversible Zn plating/stripping and effectively suppresses zinc dendrite formation. Furthermore, in-depth characterizations reveal that the energy storage mechanism can be attributed to [ZnCl]

In this work, we demonstrated nano-scaled Laue diffractions by a focused polychromatic synchrotron radiation beam to discover what happens in MoS2 when van der Waals epitaxy is locally invalid. A stronger exciton recombination with a local charge depletion in the density of 1 × 1013 cm-2, extrapolated by Raman scattering and photoluminescence, occurs in grains, which exhibits a preferred orientation of 30° rotation with respect to the c-plane of a sapphire substrate. Else, the charge doping and trion recombination dominate instead. In addition to the breakthrough in extrapolating mesoscopic crystallographic characteristics, this work opens the feasibility to manipulate charge density by the selection of the substrate-induced disturbances without external treatment and doping. Practically, the 30° rotated orientation in bilayer MoS2 films is promoted on inclined facets in the patterned sapphire substrate, which exhibits a periodic array of charge depletion of about 1.65 × 1013 cm-2. The built-in manipulation of carrier concentrations could be a potential candidate to lateral and large-area electronics based on 2D materials.

Aluminum-sulfur batteries (ASBs) have attracted substantial interest due to their high theoretical specific energy density, low cost, and environmental friendliness, while the traditional sulfur cathode and ionic liquid have very fast capacity decay, limiting cycling performance because of the sluggishly electrochemical reaction and side reactions with the electrolyte. Herein, we demonstrate, for the first time, excellent rechargeable aluminum-selenium batteries (ASeBs) using a new deep eutectic solvent, thiourea-AlCl3, as an electrolyte and Se nanowires grown directly on a flexible carbon cloth substrate (Se NWs@CC) by a low-temperature selenization process as a cathode. Selenium (Se) is a chemical analogue of sulfur with higher electronic conductivity and lower ionization potential that can improve the battery kinetics on the sluggishly electrochemical reaction and the reduction of the polarization where the thiourea-AlCl3 electrolyte can stabilize the side reaction during the reversible conversion reaction of Al-Se alloying processes during the charge-discharge process, yielding a high specific capacity of 260 mAh g-1 at 50 mA g-1 and a long cycling life of 100 times with a high Coulombic efficiency of nearly 93% at 100 mA g-1. The working mechanism based on the reversible conversion reaction of the Al-Se alloying processes, confirmed by the ex situ Raman, XRD, and XPS measurements, was proposed. This work provides new insights into the development of rechargeable aluminum-chalcogenide (S, Se, and Te) batteries.