Li-Metal Batteries: Enter the anode matrix

Brotchie, Adam

doi:10.1038/natrevmats.2016.22

Research Highlight
Published: 22 March 2016

Li-Metal Batteries: Enter the anode matrix

Adam Brotchie

Nature Reviews Materials volume 1, Article number: 16022 (2016) Cite this article

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Batteries

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A lithium-metal anode is considered to be the ‘holy grail’ by many in the battery community: it has a tenfold higher theoretical capacity than graphite — the industry standard in lithium-ion batteries. It is also lightweight and has the lowest anode potential of all known electrode materials. However, safety and performance issues associated with an unstable interface and lithium dendrite formation must be overcome for lithium-metal battery technologies to be commercially viable.

Previous attempts to mitigate dendrite growth have focused on stabilizing the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) with additives or by constructing an artificial SEI. “In the past, we have tried to use nanoscale interfacial engineering, with hollow carbon spheres, boron nitride and graphene, to build a stable interface and to control lithium deposition,” says Cui. Although such approaches are promising, they ignore a crucial failure mechanism — the extreme volume expansion that the ‘hostless’ electrode undergoes upon lithiation.

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References

Zheng, L. et al. Composite lithium metal anode by melt infusion of lithium into a 3D conducting scaffold with lithiophilic coating. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1518188113 (2016)

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