In Situ Formation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons as an Artificial Hybrid Layer for Lithium Metal Anodes

Shaozhong Chang; Xin Jin; Qiya He; Tongchao Liu; Jiabin Fang; Zihan Shen; Zhonghua Li; Shuo Zhang; Mouad Dahbi; Jones Alami; Khalil Amine; Ai-Dong Li; Huigang Zhang; Jun Lu

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03624

In Situ Formation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons as an Artificial Hybrid Layer for Lithium Metal Anodes

Nano Lett. 2022 Jan 12;22(1):263-270. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03624. Epub 2021 Dec 14.

Authors

Shaozhong Chang¹, Xin Jin¹, Qiya He², Tongchao Liu³, Jiabin Fang¹, Zihan Shen¹, Zhonghua Li¹, Shuo Zhang¹, Mouad Dahbi⁴, Jones Alami⁴, Khalil Amine³, Ai-Dong Li¹, Huigang Zhang^{1

2

5}, Jun Lu³

Affiliations

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Jiangsu 210093, China.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China.
³ Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Lemont, Illinois 60439, United States.
⁴ Materials Science and Nano-Engineering Department, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Ben Guerir 43150, Morocco.
⁵ Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.

PMID: 34905368
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c03624

Abstract

Nonuniform Li deposition causes dendrites and low Coulombic efficiency (CE), seriously hindering the practical applications of Li metal. Herein, we developed an artificial solid-state interphase (SEI) with planar polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) on the surface of Li metal anodes by a facile in situ formation technology. The resultant dihydroxyviolanthron (DHV) layers serve as the protective layer to stabilize the SEI. In addition, the oxygen-containing functional groups in the soft and conformal SEI film can regulate the diffusion and transport of Li ions to homogenize the deposition of Li metal. The artificial SEI significantly improves the CEs and shows superior cyclability of over 1000 h at 4 mAh cm^-2. The LiFePO₄/Li cell (2.8 mAh cm^-2) enables a long cyclability for 300 cycles and high CEs of 99.8%. This work offers a new strategy to inhibit Li dendrite growth and enlightens the design on stable SEI for metal anodes.

Keywords: artificial SEI; in situ formation; lithium metal anode; polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs); π−π stacking.