Metallic zinc is an attractive anode material for aqueous rechargeable batteries because of its high theoretical capacity and low cost. However, state-of-the-art zinc anodes suffer from low coulombic efficiency and severe dendrite growth during stripping/plating processes, hampering their practical applications. Here we show that eutectic-composition alloying of zinc and aluminum as an effective strategy substantially tackles these irreversibility issues by making use of their lamellar structure, composed of alternating zinc and aluminum nanolamellas. The lamellar nanostructure not only promotes zinc stripping from precursor eutectic Zn₈₈Al₁₂ (at%) alloys, but produces core/shell aluminum/aluminum sesquioxide interlamellar nanopatterns in situ to in turn guide subsequent growth of zinc, enabling dendrite-free zinc stripping/plating for more than 2000 h in oxygen-absent aqueous electrolyte. These outstanding electrochemical properties enlist zinc-ion batteries constructed with Zn₈₈Al₁₂ alloy anode and K_xMnO₂ cathode to deliver high-density energy at high levels of electrical power and retain 100% capacity after 200 hours.

The Sabatier principle is widely explored in heterogeneous catalysis, graphically depicted in volcano plots. The most desirable activity is located at the peak of the volcano, and further advances in activity past this optimum are possible by designing a catalyst that circumvents the limitation entailed by the Sabatier principle. Herein, by density functional theory calculations, we discovered an unusual Sabatier principle on high entropy alloy (HEA) surface, distinguishing the “just right” (ΔG_H* = 0 eV) in the Sabatier principle of hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). A new descriptor was proposed to design HEA catalysts for HER. As a proof-of-concept, the synthesized PtFeCoNiCu HEA catalyst endows a high catalytic performance for HER with an overpotential of 10.8 mV at −10 mA cm⁻²and 4.6 times higher intrinsic activity over the state-of-the-art Pt/C. Moreover, the unusual Sabatier principle on HEA catalysts can be extended to other catalytic reactions.