For decades, improvements in electrolytes and electrodes have driven the development of electrochemical energy storage devices. Generally, electrodes and electrolytes should not be developed separately due to the importance of the interaction at their interface. The energy storage ability and safety of energy storage devices are in fact determined by the arrangement of ions and electrons between the electrode and the electrolyte. In this paper, the physicochemical and electrochemical properties of lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors using ionic liquids (ILs) as an electrolyte are reviewed. Additionally, the energy storage device ILs developed over the last decade are introduced.
Anode‐free Li metal batteries (AFLMBs) are highly advantageous due to their high energy density, low cost, and simple fabrication. However, severe challenges, such as uncontrolled dendrite formation and low coulombic efficiency, restrict their practical application. Herein, this work introduces a silver nanoparticles incorporated p‐doped conjugated polymer (Ag‐PCP) wetting agent on the copper current collector, which promotes both uniform Li nucleation and rapid formation of a LiF‐rich solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) at the early stage, resulting in interfacial stabilization and high Li utilization efficiency. Moreover, this work verifies the interfacial fluorinated mechanism of the Ag‐PCP to efficiently achieve a favorable SEI chemistry, which serves as an intermediate process for promoting LiF formation. Benefiting from the synergistic effect of Ag–Li alloying and F‐doping chemistry of the Ag‐PCP chains, the deposited Li exhibits a compact column‐like structure with dendrite‐free morphology, and the anode‐free cells display superior cycling stability with long lifespan even under harsh conditions, with the LFP//Ag‐PCP│Cu full cell having a high capacity retention of 72% (Li inventory retention rate, 99.8%) at 1 C‐rate after 200 cycles.
Lithium is spotlighted as the next‐generation battery anode owing to its low potential and high theoretical capacity. However, the volume changes and dendrite issues hinder its practical use as an anode material. Several metallic protective layers are used to overcome these problems. However, a comprehensive understanding of the material properties and structure of protective layers within an electric field is required to determine their suitability as protective layers. Herein, the reactivity with the Li of copper and stainless steel (SS) meshes within the electric field is compared, which are active and inactive protective layers, respectively. As inactive materials do not influence the Li‐ion chemistry, the protective layer minimizes Li consumption. These characteristics lead to reducing the anodic polarization because of stable solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer formation and effective utilization of the host space. A Li–Li symmetric cell configuration containing SS mesh as a protective layer exhibits stable cycling performance with a low overpotential (20 mV) for over 800 h at a current density of 1 mA cm−2. Furthermore, the SS mesh inhibits the galvanic corrosion between the Li metal anode and mesh layer because of its low reactivity with lithium.
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