Modifying surface of Ni foam via hierarchical lithiophilic nanoarrays for stable lithium metal anodes

Abstract

Lithium metal anode with high theoretical capacity has attracted lots of attention, but dendrite growth results in poor cyclic stability during the process of repeated plating/stripping. Herein, a scaffold constructed by surface growth of hierarchical lithiophilic acicular CoNiO2 on the porous Ni foam (NF@CoNiO2) is synthesized and used to construct three-dimensional (3D) host for lithium metal anode. The experimental results show that the lithium dendrite growth is effectively inhibited and satisfactory cycling performance is achieved. Benefiting from the stable lithiophilic sites, good conductivity from the NF, large porosity, and high strength 3D structure, the host enable Li||NF@CoNiO2@Li cells to deliver low hysteresis voltage (7.7 mV) and ultra-long cycling stability (more than 2800 h, 1400 cycles) at 1 mA cm−2 with a capacity of 1 mAh cm−2. The full cells configured the NF@CoNiO2@Li anode with LiFePO4 still display a reversible discharge capacity of 126.2 mAh g−1 after 140 cycles with a Coulombic efficiency of 92.5% at 1C. This work paves a feasible way to construct the lithiophilic skeleton for dendrite-free lithium metal anode.