Anode-free rechargeable lithium metal batteries: Progress and prospects

What Can be Expected from “Anode‐Free” Lithium Metal Batteries?

“…However, these increases in gravimetric and volumetric energy density are often accompanied by limited cycle life. [7,8] Figure 1 shows the metrics of capacity retention, gravimetric and volumetric energy density of anode-free cells in comparison to related systems, namely carbon-based cells and Li metal anodes with excess Li.…”

“…Although the lithium anode reversibility and excess play the most important role, other factors such as areal capacity and first cycle CE also determine the cell cycle life. [7,8,12] Figure 1b,c show the calculated stack gravimetric (in Wh kg À1 ) and stack volumetric energy density (in Wh L À1 ) of three different battery chemistries where the anodes (graphite, Li metal with NP ¼ 2 and anode-free) were varied (stack structure is shown in Figure S1, Supporting Information). As expected, there is a significant increase in gravimetric energy density from graphite to Li metal; however, not as much from Li metal to anode-free which is caused by the high specific capacity of the Li metal anode (calculations in Table S1, Supporting Information).…”

“…The limited literature on anode-free cells over the last 6 years reports low capacity retention of <70% with <100 cycles, which is short compared with the LIB benchmark of 80% capacity retention at more than 500 cycles (Figure 2). [6,7,15] Only recently, capacity retentions of 80% with >100 cycles were reported in anode-free cells using liquid and solid electrolytes. [16,17] Details on the different works used to compose Figure 2 are provided in Table S2, Supporting Information.…”

“…[3][4][5] Driven by these recent advances in Li metal anodes, rechargeable Li metal batteries with no excess Li, the so called "anodefree" or "anode-less" batteries, became an interesting alternative, as demonstrated by the increased number of publications. [6][7][8] Anode-free cells have no initial active materials in the anode (no carbon or predeposited Li) and all the Li metal is drawn directly from the cathode during the first charge. The potential advantages of these devices are the increase in the energy density even using traditional cathode compositions and presumable reduction of cost and ease of manufacturing, assuming a single Cu foil (as current collector) can be used instead of the traditional graphite/Cu or Li/Cu combination.…”

Lithiophilic and Antioxidative Copper Current Collectors for Highly Stable Lithium Metal Batteries

“…These results profoundly illustrate that the SF‐treatment method has great potentials to proceed current collector design for Li metal batteries, even for the emerging field of anode‐free Li metal batteries. [ 49,50 ]…”