Highly Lithiophilic Cobalt Nitride Nanobrush as a Stable Host for High-Performance Lithium Metal Anodes

Abstract

Lithium metal is considered to be a holy grail of the battery anode chemistry due to its large specific capacity. Nevertheless, the uncontrollable formation of lithium dendrites resulting from uneven lithium nucleation/growth and the associated safety risk and short cyclability severely impede the practical use of lithium metal anodes. Herein, we demonstrate a highly lithiophilic cobalt nitride nanobrush on a Ni foam (Co 3 N/NF) current collector as a stable three-dimensional (3D) framework to inhibit the dendrite formation of lithium. The 3D Co 3 N/NF nanobrush electrode could enable a low nucleation overpotential for homogeneous deposition of dendrite-free lithium. Compared to the CoO/NF counterpart and the bare Cu foil/Ni foam, the Co 3 N/NF nanobrush host is of great benefit for enhanced Coulombic efficiencies and longer lifespan at various current densities. The present work will offer a new insight for the exploration of the highly lithiophilic scaffold based on metal nitrides toward high-performance lithium metal anodes.

Covalent Organic Frameworks Construct Precise Lithiophilic Sites for Uniform Lithium Deposition

“…On one hand, higher lithiophilicity is required for further facilitating the Li plating/stripping processes. On the other hand, many of the reported Li host scaffolds offer a uniform distribution of lithiophilic nanoparticles at the micrometer scale, 25,26 while the lithiophilic sites are expected to be homogeneously distributed at the atomic level rather than spatially aggregated to guide uniform Li deposition. Therefore, precise construction of the lithiophilic sites with the favored chemical structure and ordered geometric distribution is essential but insufficient among the current designing strategies.…”

Building a House for Stabilizing Lithium‐Metal Anodes

“…[16] Despite this progress, the electrochemical performance of Li metal anodes modified via building artificial SEI layers still fall short in efficiency and long-term stability for practical applications attributed to the infinite relative volume change of Li metal anode owing to its hostless nature during Li stripping/ plating process. Therefore, confining Li into three-dimensional hosts (e. g., 3D copper/nickel foam, [17][18][19][20][21][22] 3D nanostructured carbon, [23][24][25][26][27] etc.) has been considered as an effective way for mitigating the large volume expansion of Li metal anodes.…”

Alternating nanolayers as lithiophilic scaffolds for Li-metal anode

“…However, the infinite volume changes of ''host-less" lithium metal during charge-discharge could break the hardly stabilized interface, promoting dendrite growth and, thus, premature cell failure [22][23][24]. Fabricating electrode architectures that can regulate homogeneous Li deposition have shown encouraging progresses in suppressing dendrite formation [25][26][27][28][29]. Therefore, it is highly imperative to design and fabricate electrode architectures that can induce Li nucleation and host lithium metal during cycling [7,[30][31][32][33].…”