I think you are talking about the Galvanized nail, that has had zinc deposited onto the iron core in order to inhibit corrosion. You may want to study the work of Galvani and the electromotive series. https://www.britannica.com/science/electromotive-series
I think you want a mineral acid strong enough to dissolve the zinc, but not the iron. With direct electric current, you may deposit the zinc at most likely the anode, since the zinc metal in solution will have a positive charge.
I read an article about your question that it's aim was determining heavy metals such as zinc in human hair, fingernail and toenail samples. This study for digestion of nail samples uses this method :
The dried nail samples (1g) were place in a furnace and
ashes at 550 ℃ for 4 hours. The ashes were digested with 10
ml of 6 : 1 mixture of concentrated nitric and perchloric acid
kept overnight at room temperature to prevent excessive
foaming and subsequently the samples were heated at
160–180 ℃ until the mixture become water clear and
reduces to 1 ml. Each sample solution was then diluted with
0.1 N nitric acid and made to a volume of 50 ml with distilled water.
I have used only nitric acid for extracting zinc. It works very well:
Take ca. 500 mg of your dried sample into a 50 ml volumetric flask, add little bit aqua demin. add 5 ml 65% nitric acid, cook on a sandbath (130-140°C) for at least 1 hour by shaking from time to tome until there are no more nitrose gases visible. Then let it cool down, fill up to 50 ml, shake and let it rest for some hours till sample is fallen to the ground. Now you can take the supernatant for analysis.
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