Mesoporous copper-based metal glass as current collector for Li metal anode

Abstract

As functional materials, metal glass (MG) has yet been applied in rechargeable batteries. In this work, we expand their application fields into lithium (Li) metal battery by using them as the current collector for Li anode. To impede the Li dendrites growth during the repeated plating and stripping, we fabricated the CuZr MG ribbon into a genuine mesoporous surface covered with lithiophilic CuOx by a simple dealloying process, which was then used to plate Li metal. The dealloyed CuZr MG current collector with a deposited lithium capacity of 1.0 mAh cm−2 shows a high coulombic efficiency >98 % over 300 cycles at 1.0 mA cm−2. Under a high plating/stripping current density of 2.0 mA cm−2, this Li metal anode shows an ultra-low overpotential of 10 mV after >600 h cycling. Moreover, the full cell coupled with LiFePO4 cathode also displays superior cycling and rate performances. Since the CuZr MG ribbon is industrially produced, this work demonstrates the great potential of MGs for practical application in lithium batteries.