A 3D Porous Inverse Opal Ni Structure on a Cu Current Collector for Stable Lithium‐Metal Batteries

Abstract

Lithium (Li) metal is considered the best anode material for next‐generation high‐energy density Li‐metal batteries. However, Li dendrite formation and growth hinder the practical applications of Li metal anodes. Herein, we report a three‐dimensional (3D) porous inverse opal nickel structure on a copper foil current collector (Ni IO@Cu) that has a controllable pore size and thickness and is fabricated via colloidal self‐assembly and electrodeposition. The uniform interconnected pores with a large surface area of the Ni IO@Cu structure can effectively dissipate high areal current densities, resulting in the stable formation of a solid electrolyte interface and dense, dendrite‐free, flat lithium deposits. In comparison to the use of bare Cu, the use of the Ni IO@Cu current collector resulted in greatly improved stability and lowered the voltage hysteresis in various Li plating/stripping tests. Moreover, Li‐ion battery and Li‐sulfur battery full cells prepared using the Ni IO@Cu also displayed excellent cycling performance. This work further demonstrates the significance of the 3D porous structure for preparing dendrite‐free Li metal anodes.

Recent developments in current collectors for lithium metal anodes

“…56 The granular piling structure managed to dynamically adapt to volume change during Li plating/stripping to realize quick stress relaxation. More commonly, various works employed a template method along with electrodeposition to create porous structure, for instance, colloidal template method combined with copper electrodeposition, [57][58][59] porous CoP film produced by electrodeposition, 60 and hydrogen bubble dynamic template method. 61 Moreover, assembly of one-dimensional nanorods, nanofibers, or nanowires were also proposed as an efficient approach to design porous framework, such as ZnO-modified polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fiber, 22 uniform vertically aligned Cu pillars, 55 Sn-coated Cu nanowires, 33 ZnO nanorod arrays, 29 and vertically aligned carbon nanofibers.…”

Constructing 3D Skeleton on Commercial Copper Foil via Electrophoretic Deposition of Lithiophilic Building Blocks for Stable Lithium Metal Anodes

“…Although these lithiophilic materials can reduce Li nucleation overpotential and regulate Li deposition behaviors, the finite surface area of the planar electrode still restricts the suppression effect to Li dendrite formation. Therefore, different 3D structures with a large surface area, including carbon-based 3D hosts [43,44], porous inverse opal Ni structures [45], and polymer nanofiber-based networks [46], have been designed and constructed on Cu foils, which significantly reduced the localized current density and homogenized Li ion flux. Despite these developments, there is still a lack of effective and facile strategies to construct lithiophilic 3D skeletons on commercial Cu foils.…”

Ultralight Porous Cu Nanowire Aerogels as Stable Hosts for High Li-Content Metal Anodes

“…Considerable efforts have been made to address the problem of Li dendrite growth and unstable SEI. Based on the battery configuration and reaction mechanism, the strategies could be summarized as anode interface engineering (artificial SEI and interface reconstruction), − separator modification engineering, − electrolyte modification engineering, − and anode structure engineering. − Among them, the anode structure engineering, including reconstruction of Li metal and employment of porous current collectors, shows excellent effects in Li dendrite suppression. − Conventional used porous current collectors, including porous carbon nanomaterials and porous metal materials, have been widely investigated to stabilize Li metal anodes. − Compared with carbon-based current collectors, porous metal current collectors with appropriate specific surface areas are more beneficial for uniform distribution of charge density and ion concentration as well as the promotion of sufficient inner space to accommodate the deposition of Li metal and thereby could more effectively suppress the metal dendrite formation. , The introduction of porous metal current collectors has proven to be effective to inhibit Li dendrites and accommodate homogeneous Li deposition, thus pushing the commercial proceedings of highly stabilized Li metal batteries. − However, most reported porous metal hosts usually have small pore volumes and account for more than 83 wt % of the composite anode . The high density of the metal current collector will inevitably increase the portion of the inactive part in the electrode, thereby lowering the energy density of the battery. − Hence, reducing the mass of metal current collectors is significantly important for elevating the energy density of batteries.…”