Nanoscale Nucleation and Growth of Electrodeposited Lithium Metal

And lowest electrochemical potential of all known materials. However, lithium has been plagued by the issues of dendrite formation, high chemical reactivity with electrolyte, and infinite relative volume expansion during plating and stripping, which present safety hazards and low cycling efficiency in batteries with lithium metal electrodes. There have been a lot of recent studies on Li metal although little work has focused on the initial nucleation and growth behavior of Li metal, neglecting a critical fundamental scientific foundation of Li plating. Here, we study experimentally the morphology of lithium in the early stages of nucleation and growth on planar copper electrodes in liquid organic electrolyte.…

• UD
  U.S. Department of Defense
• UD
  U.S. Department of Energy
• SU
  Stanford University
• ND
  National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate
• VT
  Vehicle Technologies Program