Modulating Sand’s time by ion-transport-enhancement toward dendrite-free lithium metal anode
Yushan Yan, Chaozhu Shu, Ruixin Zheng, Minglu Li, Zhiqun Ran, Miao He, Anjun Hu, Ting Zeng, Haoyang Xu, Ying Zeng
Abstract
Metallic lithium is deemed as the “Holy Grail” anode in high-energy-density secondary batteries. Uncontrollable lithium dendrite growth and related issues originated from uneven concentration distribution of Li + in the vicinity of the anode, however, induce severe safety concerns and poor cycling efficiency, dragging lithium metal anode out of practical application. Herein we address these issues by using cross-linked lithiophilic amino phosphonic acid resin as the effective host with the ion-transport-enhancement feature. Based on theoretical calculations and multiphysics simulation, it is found that this ion-transport-enhancement feature is capable of facilitating the self-concentration kinetics of Li + and accelerating Li + transfer at the electrolyte/electrode interface, leading to uniform bulk lithium deposition. Experimental results show that the proposed lithium-hosting resin decreases the irreversible lithium capacity and improves lithium utilization (with the Coulombic efficiency (CE) of 98.8% over 130 cycles). Our work demonstrates that inducing the self-concentrating distribution of Li + at the interface can be an effective strategy for improving the interfacial ion concentration gradient and optimizing lithium deposition, which opens a new avenue for the practical development of next-generation lithium metal batteries.