Electrodeposited Metal Oxide Lithiophilic Coatings on Three-Dimensional Current Collectors for Lithium Metal Anodes

Abstract

Lithium (Li) metal batteries are promising candidates for next-generation high-energy-density rechargeable batteries, relieving customers’ anxiety about long driving ranges per charge for electric vehicles. However, many challenges hinder the deployment of lithium metal anodes, including the detrimental growth of Li dendrites during cycling and poor adhesion of Li on copper current collectors. The three-dimensional (3D) structural design of copper current collectors offers a promising design mitigating Li dendrite formation along with the reduction of the local current density associated with the current collectors’ high surface area in the 3D format, albeit with no improvement on Li adhesion. Thus, the modification of copper current collectors’ surfaces with lithiophilic coatings of high affinity for lithium increases the wettability of Li and is a promising approach to improve the performance of 3D current collectors-based Li metal anodes. Metal oxide coatings are good lithiophilic coatings; however, there is a concern about scalability due to the commonly used high vacuum techniques for metal oxide coatings. In this work, we demonstrate a low-cost electrodeposition paradigm to modify the current collector surfaces with metal oxides, resulting in dendrite-free and low surface area Li deposits. The electrochemical performance of metal oxide-coated 3D current collectors was performed in symmetric and anode-free cells, all of which demonstrated longer cycling life compared to the uncoated current collectors’ counterparts.