Designing Electrolyte Structure to Suppress Hydrogen Evolution Reaction in Aqueous Batteries

Aqueous batteries (ABs) have attracted increasing attention because of their inherent safety and low cost. Nevertheless, hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) at the anode presents severe challenges for stable and safe operation of ABs. Instead of passivating the anode surface to hinder HER kinetics, a design strategy is proposed here to suppress the HER via alternating its thermodynamics pathway. Addition of a hydrogen bond acceptor, dimethyl...