Biomimetic Designed Stable Lithium Metal Anodes by Co‐depositing Li with 2D Materials Shuttle

Lithium metal batteries are promising candidates for next‐generation battery technology due to their high energy density. However, research progress in lithium metal batteries is severely hindered by the lithium dendrite growth. Lithium is soft with mechanical modulus as low as polymers. This inspires us to suppress lithium dendrites using nacre structure, which is soft‐hard organic‐inorganic lamella. Here, we view lithium as the soft organic segment and choose colloidal vermiculite sheets as the hard inorganic constituent, which theoretically have 30 times higher modulus. The vermiculite sheets have high negative charges. They can absorb plenty of Li+ in electrolytes and then be co‐deposited with lithium, flattening the lithium growth and forming a rock‐shaped structure which is dendrite‐free over hundreds of cycles. After surface absorbed Li+ were deposited, vermiculite sheets become negative charged again and leave the substrate along the electric field, further absorbing new Li+ for homogeneous deposition as a shuttle. Long term cycling of full cells using the nacre‐mimetic lithium metal anodes is also demonstrated. Furthermore, the bio‐inspired approach presented here is adaptable and can be extended to other metal‐based battery systems.

from A via a.sfakia on Inoreader http://bit.ly/2WGCydH