Electrolyte‐Wettability Issues and Challenges of Electrode Materials in Electrochemical Energy Storage, Energy Conversion, and Beyond

Abstract

The electrolyte-wettability of electrode materials in liquid electrolytes plays a crucial role in electrochemical energy storage, conversion systems, and beyond relied on interface electrochemical process. However, most electrode materials do not have satisfactory electrolyte-wettability for possibly electrochemical reaction. In the last 30 years, there are a lot of literature have directed at exploiting methods to improve electrolyte-wettability of electrodes, understanding basic electrolyte-wettability mechanisms of electrode materials, exploring the effect of electrolyte-wettability on its electrochemical energy storage, conversion, and beyond performance. This review systematically and comprehensively evaluates the effect of electrolyte-wettability on electrochemical energy storage performance of the electrode materials used in supercapacitors, metal ion batteries, and metal-based batteries, electrochemical energy conversion performance of the electrode materials used in fuel cells and electrochemical water splitting systems, as well as capacitive deionization performance of the electrode materials used in capacitive deionization systems. Finally, the challenges in approaches for improving electrolyte-wettability of electrode materials, characterization techniques of electrolyte-wettability, as well as electrolyte-wettability of electrode materials applied in special environment and other electrochemical systems with electrodes and liquid electrolytes, which gives future possible directions for constructing interesting electrolyte-wettability to meet the demand of high electrochemical performance, are also discussed.