Biomass-derived cathode materials in rechargeable zinc-ion batteries: Progress, challenges, and opportunities

Since the inherent safety, reduced cost and environmental friendliness, the Zinc-ion batteries (ZIBs) have achieved predominant attraction as propitious possibility in the arena of energy storage systems at large-scale. The strategies of industrial development and academic research have their prime focus on ZIBs. However, before achieving meaningful advancements, initially the key significant challenges like the inadequate electrode structural stability, suboptimal charge kinetics, costly and complicated manufacturing methods must be resolved. At current the biomass derived materials have gained significant attraction to be used as cathode materials for ZIBs and also other batteries since its reduced cost, renewability and distinct chemical structure. This type of biomass cathode materials is rich in functional groups that tends to react with metal ions to provide excellent ionic conductivity. Expanding upon this groundwork, the review brings out the survey of the biomass derived carbon electrode materials, stating all the basic factors that impact the electrochemical characteristics like the structural stability, ion diffusion pathways, redox activity, electronic conductivity, and characteristics of surface/interface. The optimization and the rational configuration of the enhanced electrode performance for ZIBs highly includes the clear understanding of all the above-mentioned parameters. Secondly, in order to achieve the fast reaction kinetics and the cyclic stability, the current progress, hindrance and the techniques to overcome the obstruction are discussed in detail. Further, the structural engineering strategies, Zinc-ion storage mechanism, electrochemical behavior are analyzed in detail to provide in-depth discernment into design principles. Also, the utilization of biomass derived materials that exhibits the enhanced potential to decrease the production cost of batteries, which is highly effective for large scale production and popularization of ZIBs. Finally, the critical challenges and the promising opportunities are discussed for the future development of ZIBs for their progressive development and pervasive practical implementation in the field.