A review of low-temperature lithium metal battery research

Abstract

Rechargeable lithium metal batteries (LMBs) are one of the promising energy storage systems, which have the advantage of a high theoretical specific capacity of 3860 mAh/g and a low reduction potential of −3.04 V vs. SHE. With the development of society, the large use of batteries in low-temperature areas is inevitable. Typically, batteries fail at low temperatures, especially with temperatures below −20 °C, but the research on low-temperature behavior is limited. According to previous research on low-temperature lithium metal batteries, the main challenge is to suppress serious dendrite growth at low temperatures. Here, we reviewed the state-of-art progress of low-temperature LMBs, including protect layer, three-dimensional collector, and electrolyte. We found that most of the research works relate to electrolytes because a novel electrolyte can easily solvate, contribute to ion transportation, and be conducive to solid electrolyte interfacial (SEI) film formation, which can accelerate the kinetics at low temperatures, thus suppressing the serious dendrite growth at low temperatures. We propose that solid electrolytes can suppress the dendrite growth of LMBs at low temperatures effectively because solid electrolytes are not easy to be pierced.