Fig. 5: Understanding the intrinsic differences between bare copper and copper modified with ~8 nm of ALD films.
From: Electrical resistance of the current collector controls lithium morphology
a Normalized electrical resistivity of ALD-modified substrates. b Voltage profiles showing the first cycle of lithium deposition at 1 mA/cm2 and 1 mAh/cm2 (with the x-axis plotted up to 0.4 mAh/cm2 to accentuate the voltage profiles) on bare copper and ALD-modified copper. c Extracted nucleation overpotential of 1 mAh/cm2 lithium plated at 1 mA/cm2 on bare and ALD-modified copper substrates averaged over three cells, with each error bar representing one standard deviation from the average. d–g Top-view SEM images of 1 mAh/cm2 of lithium plated at 1 mA/cm2 on 1, 2, 4, and 8 nm of Al2O3-modified copper, respectively. h Illustration of lithium metal deposition on a resistive substrate. i Optical image of a 50 nm Al2O3-modified copper substrate with 25 µm-sized holes that expose the underlying copper substrate. j SEM image (~30° tilt) of 0.5 mAh/cm2 of lithium deposited at 1 mA/cm2 atop the patterned substrate shown in panel i.
