Defect Engineering‐Regulated Cerium‐Based Zinc‐Free Anode Zinc Metal Batteries With High Cycling Stability

ABSTRACT Aqueous zinc‐ion batteries (AZIBs) have emerged as a highly promising energy storage technology, featuring high energy density, low cost, and excellent safety. However, insufficient cycling stability induced by side reactions and dendrite growth on the anode severely hinders their practical applications. Herein, a vacancy‐rich rare earth oxide/carbon composite anode material is synthesized. The porous structure of the conductive carbon framework serves to disperse ion flux and promote uniform Zn deposition, while the unique hydrophobicity of the rare earth oxide effectively suppresses the hydrogen evolution reaction. Furthermore, La doping not only introduces defects such as vacancies that act as active sites for Zn deposition to induce uniform nucleation and growth, but also generates oxygen vacancies that reduce the charge transfer resistance at the electrode‐electrolyte interface, enhance the diffusion coefficient of the electrode, and accelerate ion migration within the electrode. Benefiting from these distinctive advantages, the LC‐3|Zn battery exhibits a low voltage hysteresis of 61.2 mV and a low nucleation overpotential of 27.1 mV. The battery designed based on this anode achieves exceptional long cycle stability, maintaining 100% capacity retention after 5500 cycles.