Lithium metal anodes: Toward an improved understanding of coupled morphological, electrochemical, and mechanical behavior

Kevin N. Wood, Malachi Noked, Neil P. Dasgupta

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

468 Scopus citations

Abstract

Li metal anodes are often considered a "holy grail" in the field of rechargeable batteries. Accordingly, the research community continuously seeks new strategies to improve their cyclability and reduce interfacial degradation. However, many recent reports focus on approaches that mitigate the symptoms of poor performance due to dendrites without addressing the underlying root cause of why they form and how they evolve. We propose that an emphasis on purely performance-based metrics has diluted the community's understanding of why a certain methodology is (un)successful. Furthermore, the lack of consistent protocols for reporting cell performance and inconsistent terminology for describing physical phenomena that occur at the Li anode make quantitative comparison difficult. The goal of this Perspective is to motivate the need for more consistent and fundamental research on the interfacial electrochemistry on Li metal anodes. Herein we provide an overview of: 1) recent advances in understanding the fundamental behavior of Li metal 2) the different "dendrite" morphologies (needle, mossy, fractal) often observed during cycling 3) the corresponding electrochemical and mechanical signatures of these various dendrites during cycling 4) the various failure modes of Li metal anodes and 5) how these failure modes are related to interactions at the electrode/electrolyte interface. As a result of these discussion points, five major questions are proposed that should be addressed through fundamental research in order to formulate design rules for mitigating deleterious performance of Li metal anodes, and standard experimental conditions are proposed that should be taken into account when reporting new strategies for Li stabilization.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)664-672
Number of pages9
JournalACS Energy Letters
Volume2
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 10 Mar 2017

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 American Chemical Society.

Funding

M.N acknowledges the support of the Israel Science Foundation in the framework of the INREP project. K.N.W. and N.P.D. acknowledge support from the Advanced Research Projects Association-Energy (ARPA-E), under Award Number DE-AR-0000653.

FundersFunder number
Advanced Research Projects Association-EnergyDE-AR-0000653
Israel Science Foundation

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