The
latest developments of localized high-concentration electrolytes
(LHCEs) shed light on stabilizing the high-energy-density lithium
(Li) metal batteries. It is generally considered that the nonsolvating
diluents introduced into the LHCEs improve the viscosity and wettability
of high-concentration electrolytes (HCEs) without changing their inner
solvation structures, thus maintaining the highly coordinated contact
ion pairs (CIPs) and ionic aggregates (AGGs) of the precursor HCEs
with limited free solvent numbers and high Coulombic efficiency (CE)
of Li metal anodes. Herein, we show an unexpected effect of the diluent
amount on the solvation structures of the LHCEs: as the diluent amount
increases, the proportions of free solvent molecules and CIPs rise
up simultaneously. The latter is probably due to the partial splits
of the AGGs via the dipole–dipole interactions between the
diluent and solvent molecules. Accordingly, a moderately diluted LHCE
shows the best Coulombic efficiency of Li metal anodes (99.6%), compared
with the precursor HCE (97.4%) or highly diluted LHCE (99.0%). This
work reveals a new criterion of the LHCE chemical formulation for
the designing of advanced electrolytes for high-energy-density batteries.