Towards High‐Performance Aqueous Zinc Batteries via a Semi‐Conductive Bipolar‐Type Polymer Cathode.

Aqueous Zn‐organic batteries have received considerable attention owing to their green, low‐cost and high safe nature. Unfortunately, organic materials generally exhibit insulator nature (≈10−10 S cm−1), and most of reported promising performances of Zn‐organic batteries are achieved with a low mass‐loading (≈2 mg cm−2) in cathode, which is far away from practical application (10 mg cm−2). Herein, we demonstrate a semi‐conductive polymer poly(1,8‐diaminonaphthalene) (PDAN) cathode material for Zn batteries, which shows a moderate electronic conductivity (5.9×10−5 S cm−1). Theoretical calculations and in situ/ex situ analysis reveal that the cathode involves a bipolar‐type charge storage mechanism. Accordingly, the Zn//PDAN cell exhibits a promising capacity (140 mAh g−1 at 0.1 A g−1) and a remarkable cycle stability (1000 cycles without capacity fading) at a high mass‐loading (10 mg cm−2). These encouraging results shed light on the design of advanced organic electrode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]