Abstract
Uncontrolled growth of lithium dendrites during cycling has remained a challenging issue for lithium metal batteries. Thus far, various approaches have been proposed to delay or suppress dendrite growth, yet little attention has been paid to the solutions that can make batteries keep working when lithium dendrites are already extensively present. Here we develop an industry-adoptable technology to laterally direct the growth of lithium dendrites, where all dendrites are retained inside the compartmented copper current collector in a given limited cycling capacity. This featured electrode layout renders superior cycling stability (e.g., smoothly running for over 150 cycles at 0.5 mA cm−2). Numerical simulations indicate that reduced dendritic stress and damage to the separator are achieved when the battery is abusively running over the ceiling capacity to generate protrusions. This study may contribute to a deeper comprehension of metal dendrites and provide a significant step towards ultimate safe batteries.
Highlights
Uncontrolled growth of lithium dendrites during cycling has remained a challenging issue for lithium metal batteries
Whereas the extreme situation when controlled dendrite suppression/delay is lost in these strategies has been rarely discussed, because the emergence of Li dendrites cannot be completely avoided during prolonged cycling[3], especially when batteries are operated at high current densities, in overcharge ultimate, or at low operation temperatures[26,27]
Digital images of the current collector samples before and after different processing steps are displayed in Supplementary Fig. 1
Summary
Uncontrolled growth of lithium dendrites during cycling has remained a challenging issue for lithium metal batteries. Li metal anode has the highest safety risk, which mainly derives from the uncontrolled growth of Li dendrites during repeated electrochemical charging/discharging, accompanied with dendrite-induced internal shorts, impeding the further commercialization of high-energy-density rechargeable lithium metal batteries (LMBs) such as Li-air and Lisulfur batteries[2,3,4,5] Efforts towards addressing this issue have been mainly focused on dendrite-growth-delay/suppression strategies via the employment of optimized electrolyte[6,7,8,9,10], modified separators[11,12,13], Li anode surface modifications[14,15], artificial anode surface coatings[16,17,18,19], accommodating nano- and microstructured current collectors[20,21,22,23,24,25], etc. By laterally directing the encapsulation of Li metal in the micro-compartments, the assembled LMBs consisting of ECu-based Li metal anode and LiFePO4 (LFP) cathode can run for 250 cycles with a capacity retention of 100.7%
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