Development of low-cost advanced 3D anodes for lithium metal batteries

The wide adoption of electric vehicles and renewable energy sources can improve overall energy efficiency and reduce energy-related emission. Renewable energy sources such as solar and wind require large amounts of energy to eliminate the need for fossil fuels and take ôdirtyö powerplants offline. However, performances of current graphite-anode based lithium-ion batteries have approached a plateau and cannot meet the requirements, especially at cost, charge rate and/or energy density. The use of lithium metal as the anode is considered the holy as it has ten times the specific capacity (3860 mAh/g) compared to the graphite material (372 mAh/g) used in todayĺs anodes. However, the use of lithium metal leads to the undesirable growth of lithium structures (ôdendritesö) at the anode surface as the battery is charged, limiting the batteryĺs charge rate, reduce a batteryĺs capacity, introduce various failure modes, and create significant safety concerns. Different from traditional practices of using solid electrolyte to block the dendrite growth for lithium metal anode, the project will further develop advanced metal anodes that feature a 3D porous conductive substrate with designed passivation surface that can utilize lithium metal as an anode material without the performance degradation caused by lithium dendrites, enabling lithium batteries with 2x higher capacity, and 30% lower cost to help with the electrification transformation of the society. Preliminary results had validated the technology; however, the materials still need to be improved to satisfy the requirements of the customers. The Phase I project will optimize the preparation of the anode materials through a design of experiment matrix and evaluated the anode materials in small coin-size batterie and >200 mAh single layer pouch cells. The optimized materials will enable 500 cycles with over 80% capacity retention in single layer pouch batteries and be ready for the development of multilayer prototype batteries in Phase II. The anode materials developed in the project will be sold to battery manufacturers to be incorporated into the next generation batteries for a variety of applications, including drones, consumer electronics, electric vehicles, and renewable energy storages, helping improve peopleĺs life and accelerate transition to a net-zero society.