posted on 2021-09-07, 14:36authored byPengbo Zhai, Lixuan Liu, Yi Wei, Jinghan Zuo, Zhilin Yang, Qian Chen, Feifei Zhao, Xiaokun Zhang, Yongji Gong
Seeded
lithium (Li) nucleation has been considered as a promising
strategy to achieve uniform Li deposition. However, problems of agglomeration
and pulverization quickly invalidate the nucleation seeds, resulting
in Li dendrite growth during repeated charge/discharge processes.
Herein, liquid gallium–indium (GaIn) nanoparticles with structural
self-healing properties are utilized to guide uniform metallic Li
nucleation and deposition. Ultrafine GaIn nanoparticles (∼25
nm) uniformly decorated on the surface of carbon layers effectively
homogenize the lithium-ion flux. After fully Li stripping, lithiophilic
GaIn nanoparticles return to the liquid binary eutectic phase, thereby
healing the deformed structure and enabling them to continuously guide
dendrite-free Li deposition. Li metal anodes with such nucleation
seeds exhibit nearly zero nucleation overpotential even after hundreds
of cycles and a high average Coulombic efficiency of 99.03% for more
than 400 cycles. The design of self-healing nucleation seeds provides
important insights for obtaining high-performance lithium metal anodes.