The uncontrolled growth of Li dendrites upon cycling might result in low coulombic efficiency and severe safety hazards.Herein, alithiophilic binary lithium-aluminum alloyl ayer,w hich was generated through an in situ electrochemical process,was utilized to guide the uniform metallic Li nucleation and growth, free from the formation of dendrites. Moreover,t he formed LiAl alloy layer can function as aL i reservoir to compensate the irreversible Li loss,enabling longterm stability.T he protected Li electrode shows superior cycling over 1700 hinaLi j Li symmetric cell.

Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries have emerged as promising energy storage devices due to their high theoretical specific energy densities; their practical applications, however, have been restricted due to their poor cycling...

Lithium (Li) is a promising battery anode because of its high theoretical capacity and low reduction potential, but safety hazards that arise from its continuous dendrite growth and huge volume changes limit its practical applications. Li can be hosted in a framework material to address these key issues, but methods to encage Li inside scaffolds remain challenging. The melt infusion of molten Li into substrates has attracted enormous attention in both academia and industry because it provides an industrially adoptable technology capable of fabricating composite Li anodes. In this review, the wetting mechanism driving the spread of liquefied Li toward a substrate is discussed. Following this, various strategies are proposed to engineer stable Li metal composite anodes that are suitable for liquid and solid-state electrolytes. A general conclusion and a perspective on the current limitations and possible future research directions for constructing composite Li anodes for high-energy lithium metal batteries are presented.

Lithium batteries are key components of portable devices and electric vehicles due to their high energy density and long cycle life. To meet the increasing requirements of electric devices, however, energy density of Li batteries needs to be further improved. Anode materials, as a key component of the Li batteries, have a remarkable effect on the increase of the overall energy density. At present, various anode materials including Li anodes, high‐capacity alloy‐type anode materials, phosphorus‐based anodes, and silicon anodes have shown great potential for Li batteries. Composite‐structure anode materials will be further developed to cater to the growing demands for electrochemical storage devices with high‐energy‐density and high‐power‐density. In this review, the latest progress in the development of high‐energy Li batteries focusing on high‐energy‐capacity anode materials has been summarized in detail. In addition, the challenges for the rational design of current Li battery anodes and the future trends are also presented.

The uncontrolled growth of Li dendrites upon cycling might result in low coulombic efficiency and severe safety hazards. Herein, a lithiophilic binary lithium–aluminum alloy layer, which was generated through an in situ electrochemical process, was utilized to guide the uniform metallic Li nucleation and growth, free from the formation of dendrites. Moreover, the formed LiAl alloy layer can function as a Li reservoir to compensate the irreversible Li loss, enabling long‐term stability. The protected Li electrode shows superior cycling over 1700 h in a Li|Li symmetric cell.

The matrix-free polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) formed by polymer-grafted nanoparticles(NPs) gain enormous attention due to their controllable morphology and robust properties. Herein, through molecular dynamics simulation, such PNCs are successfully constructed, and the dispersion state of the NPs can be tailored by varying the grafting density. By manipulating the interaction strength between the end groups of the grafted polymer chains, the tensile fracture behavior and the chain orientation are examined. It is revealed that both of them fall down at large strain because of the propagation of the cavities. By probing the self-healing kinetics at various self-healing temperature and time, a time-temperature superposition principle, similar to the Williams, Landel and Ferry equation, is proposed. These results could provide some fundamental guidelines for the design and fabrication of high performance PNCs with excellent self-healing functionality.

The incorporation of flexible anisotropic nanoparticles (NPs) into elastomeric polymer materials is found to effectively decrease the dynamic hysteresis loss.

In this paper we adopt molecular dynamics simulations to study the amphiphilic AB block copolymer (BCP) mediated nanoparticle (NP) dispersion in polymer nanocomposites (PNCs), with the A-block being compatible with the NPs and the B-block being miscible with the polymer matrix. The effects of the number and components of BCP, as well as the interaction strength between A-block and NPs on the spatial organization of NPs, are explored. We find that the increase of the fraction of the A-block brings different dispersion effect to NPs than that of B-block. We also find that the best dispersion state of the NPs occurs in the case of a moderate interaction strength between the A-block and the NPs. Meanwhile, the stress–strain behavior is probed. Our simulation results verify that adopting BCP is an effective way to adjust the dispersion of NPs in the polymer matrix, further to manipulate the mechanical properties.