Dynamic Intelligent Cu Current Collectors for Ultrastable Lithium Metal Anodes

Jianyu Chen; Jin Zhao; Linna Lei; Pan Li; Jun Chen; Yu Zhang; Yizhou Wang; Yanwen Ma; Dan Wang

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00316

Dynamic Intelligent Cu Current Collectors for Ultrastable Lithium Metal Anodes

Nano Lett. 2020 May 13;20(5):3403-3410. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00316. Epub 2020 Apr 8.

Authors

Jianyu Chen¹, Jin Zhao¹, Linna Lei¹, Pan Li¹, Jun Chen¹, Yu Zhang², Yizhou Wang¹, Yanwen Ma¹, Dan Wang^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory for Organic Electronics and Information Displays, Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Biosensors, Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing University of Posts & Telecommunications, 9 Wenyuan Road, Nanjing 210023, China.
² Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Centre of Biomedical Functional Materials, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of New Power Batteries, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210023, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Biochemical Engineering, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 1 North Second Street, Zhongguancun Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China.

PMID: 32239948
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00316

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) current collectors have shown great potential in realizing dendrite-free lithium (Li) metal anodes. However, the rigid 3D current collectors could not simultaneously suppress Li dendrite growth and allow Li plating/stripping under high capacities and large current densities. Here, we report a dynamic intelligent Cu (DICu) current collector that dynamically accommodates the volume change by changing the packing density of the assembled particles. The Li/DICu electrode achieves a high Coulombic efficiency of 99.6% after 800 cycles. The symmetrical cell shows exceptional cycling stability under the high current density of 10 mA cm^-2. Notably, when assembled in full-cell batteries, the Li/DICu|LiFePO₄ battery maintains a specific capacity of 139.5 mAh g^-1 at 1 C for 500 cycles, and the Li/DICu|S battery delivers a specific capacity of 804 mAh g^-1 after 500 cycles at 0.5 C, corresponding to the best performance among Li metal batteries with Cu-based current collectors to date.

Keywords: Cu current collectors; Li dendrites; Li metal anodes; dynamic intelligent structure; ultrastable performance.