Magnesium Foil Composed of (002) Facet Dominated Hexagonal Prism Arrays Prepared by Vacuum Thermal Evaporation as Anode for Rechargeable Magnesium Batteries

Rechargeable magnesium batteries (RMBs) are next-generation energy storage systems, but rolled Mg anodes face challenges in fabricating ultrathin Mg foil and achieving inhomogeneous Mg plating/stripping. Herein, a Mg foil (∼10 μm) was deposited onto a Cu substrate (Mg@Cu) via vacuum thermal evaporation (VTE), exhibiting (002)-dominated hexagonal prism arrays. Notably, the Mg@Cu||Mg@Cu symmetric cell achieves a polarization of ∼150 mV cycled over 1000 h under a Mg utilization of 52%. The basal-plane-rich structure in Mg@Cu not only homogenizes Mg2+ distribution but also facilitates Mg2+ transport kinetics, thereby enabling more uniform Mg plating/stripping. Therefore, the Mg@Cu||Mo6S8 full cell maintains 76.6 mAh g–1 after 1500 cycles at 1 C, outperforming the case using rolled Mg foil (67.2 mAh g–1) in terms of capacity retention. This work offers a feasible method to prepare Mg foil avoiding complex processing, which can shed light on the development of a Mg anode for rechargeable magnesium batteries.