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In aqueous zinc ion batteries (ZIBs), the H+ intercalation possesses superior electrochemical kinetics with excellent rate capability, however, precisely modulating H+ intercalation has been still challenging. Herein, a critical modification of pre-intercalating metal ions in the MnO2 interlayer (M-MnO2 ) with controllable p-band center (ϵp ) of O is reported to modulate the H+ intercalation. The modulation of metal-O bond type and covalency degree on the average charge of O atom results in optimized ϵp and H+ adsorption energy for M-MnO2 , thus promoting the balance between H+ adsorption and desorption, which plays a determinant role on H+ intercalation. The optimized Cu-MnO2 delivers superior rate capability with the capacity of 153 mAh g-1 at a high rate of 3 A g-1 after 1000 cycles. This work demonstrates that ϵp could be a significant descriptor for H+ intercalation, and tuning ϵp effectively increases H+ intercalation contribution with excellent rate capability in ZIBs.
Zhang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.