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This review identifies and analyses the interfacial challenges of aqueous zinc-ion batteries and discusses the design strategies for addressing the defined interfacial issues from the perspectives of electrolyte optimization, electrode modification and separator improvement.

The performance of single-atom catalysts strongly depends on their particular coordination environments in the near-surface region. Herein, we discover that engineering extra Pt single atoms in the subsurface (Ptsubsurf) can significantly enhance the catalytic efficiency of surface Pt single atoms toward the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR). We experimentally and theoretically investigated the effects of the Ptsubsurfsingle atoms implanted in different positions of the subsurface of Co particles. The local environments and catalytic properties of surface Pt1are highly tunable via Ptsubsurfdoping. Specifically, the obtained Pt1@Co/NC catalyst displays a remarkable performance for ORR, achieving mass activity of 4.2 mA μgPt–1(28 times higher than that of commercial Pt/C) at 0.9 V versus reversible hydrogen electrode (RHE) in 0.1 M HClO4solution with high stability over 30000 cycles.

Room-temperature sodium–sulfur (RT-Na/S) batteries hold great promise for sustainable and cost-effective applications. Nevertheless, it remains a great challenge to achieve high capacity and cycling stability due to the low activity of sulfur and the sluggish conversion kinetics between polysulfide intermediates and sodium sulfide. Herein, an electrocatalyzing S cathode is fabricated, which consists of porous core–shell structure and multisulfiphilic sites. The flexible carbon structure effectively buffers volume changes during cycling and provides enclosed spaces to store S8with exceptional conductivity. Significantly, the multisulfiphilic sites (ZnS and CoS2) enhance catalysis toward multistep S conversion, which effectively suppresses long-chain polysulfides dissolution and improves the kinetics of short-chain polysulfides. Thus, the obtained S cathodes achieve an enhanced cycling performance (570 mAh g–1at 0.2 A g–1over 1000 cycles), decent rate capability (250 mAh g–1at 1.0 A g–1over 2000 cycles), and high energy density of 384 Wh kg–1toward practical applications.

A ‘solid–liquid’ conversion for increasing the sulfur content from ~ 50 to 72% for RT Na–S batteries is developed.The redox mechanisms of two types of sulfur: sulfur on the surface of a cathode host (155S) and sulfur in the pores of the host (300S) in ether and carbonate ester electrolytes are studied.The function of NaNO3additive on modifying Na anode and confining the shuttle effect of dissolving polysulfides during ‘solid–liquid’ conversion is visualized.