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Published on: August 12, 2013
Single-Atom Iron as Lithiophilic Site To Minimize Lithium Nucleation Overpotential for Stable Lithium Metal Full
Yawen Sun1, Jinqiu Zhou1, Haoqing Ji1
1College of Energy, Key Laboratory of Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies of Jiangsu Province, Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Manufacturing Technologies of Jiangsu Province & Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Technologies of Education Ministry of China , Soochow University , Suzhou 215006 , P. R. China.
Abstract:
High lithium nucleation overpotential on a lithiophobic matrix results in uncontrollable growth of lithium dendrites and thus restricts the wide application of lithium-metal batteries. Herein, the single-atom iron in a N-doped carbon matrix (FeSA-N-C) is first reported as a lithiophilic site to minimize Li nucleation overpotential from 18.6 mV to a very low value of 0.8 mV. Molecular dynamics simulations quantitatively confirmed the excellent affinity between Li ions and FeSA-N-C in the atomic level. Induced by the homogeneously distributed FeSA-N in the carbon substrate, uniform and stable metallic Li plating/stripping behaviors are realized and lithium dendrite growth is greatly suppressed. The proposed strategy of using single-atom iron as a lithiophilic site to minimize lithium nucleation overpotential opens a promising avenue for solving intrinsic problems of Li-metal-based batteries.
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