This review article summarizes the current trends and provides guidelines towards next-generation rechargeable lithium and lithium-ion battery chemistries.

Lithium–sulfur (Li‐S) batteries have been considered as promising candidates for large‐scale high energy density devices due to the potentially high energy density, low cost, and more pronounced ecological compatibility. However, the complex Li‐S conversion reactions, unsatisfactory battery performance, and unsafe metallic Li anode restrict the development of Li‐S batteries to achieve commercialization. This review mainly focuses on three aspects which are the remaining challenges, recent advances, and applications in Li‐S batteries. Firstly, this review portrays Li‐S conversion chemistry involving the multi‐step and multi‐electron reaction mechanism, as well as the remaining challenges. Then, the scientific strategies and very recent advances of the cathode, electrolyte, lithium anode, and other constituent parts of Li‐S batteries are detailly summed up, as well as their advantages and limitations. For the sake of promoting the Li‐S batteries practicalization, next section is primarily concerned with problems, the corresponding solutions, and application scenarios of practical pouch cells. Finally, the important findings as guidelines and some future directions as trends for developing emerging Li‐S batteries are briefly summarized.

The conventional weak acidic electrolyte for aqueous zinc-ion batteries breeds many challenges, such as undesirable side reactions, and inhomogeneous zinc dendrite growth, leading to low Coulombic efficiency, low specific capacity, and poor cycle stability. Here, an aqueous densified electrolyte, namely, a conventional aqueous electrolyte with addition of perovskite SrTiO₃ powder, is developed to achieve high-performance aqueous zinc-ion batteries. The densified electrolyte demonstrates unique properties of reducing water molecule activity, improving Zn²⁺ transference number, and inducing homogeneous and preferential deposition of Zn (002). As a result, the densified electrolyte exhibits an ultra-long cycle stability over 1000 cycles in Zn/Ti half cells. In addition, the densified electrolyte enables Zn/MnO₂ cells with a high specific capacity of 328.2 mAh g⁻¹ at 1 A g⁻¹ after 500 cycles under an extended voltage range. This work provides a simple strategy to induce dendrite-free deposition characteristics and high performance in high-voltage aqueous zinc-ion batteries.