Lithiophilic Chemistry Facilitated Ultrathin Lithium for Scalable Prelithiation
Kuangyu Wang, Cheng Yang, Ruichuan Yuan, Fei Xu, Yingchuan Zhang, Tiezheng Ding, Maosheng Yu, Xinxiu Xu, Yuanzheng Long, Yulong Wu, Lei Li, Xiaoyan Li, Hui Wu
Abstract
Prelithiation plays a crucial role in advancing the development of high-energy-density batteries, and ultrathin lithium (UTL) has been proven to be a promising anode prelithiation reagent. However, there remains a need to explore an adjustable, efficient, and cost-effective method for manufacturing UTL. In this study, we introduce a method for producing UTL with adjustable thicknesses ranging from 1.5 to 10 μm through blade coating of molten lithium on poly(vinylidene fluoride)-modified copper current collectors. By employing the transfer-printing method, prelithiated graphite and Si–C composite electrodes are prepared, which exhibit significantly improved initial Coulombic efficiencies of 99.60% and 99.32% in half-cells, respectively. Moreover, the energy densities of Li(NiCoMn) 1/3 O 2 and LiFePO 4 full cells assembled with the prelithiated graphite electrodes increase by 13.1% and 23.6%, respectively.