Sowing Silver Seeds within Patterned Ditches for Dendrite-Free Lithium Metal Batteries

The interfacial instability of lithium (Li) metal is one of the critical challenges, which hinders the application of rechargeable Li metal batteries (LMBs). Designing facile and effective surface/interface is extremely important for practical LMBs manufacturing. Here, a highly stable Li anode with silver nanowires sowed in the patterned ditches via a simple calendaring process is developed. The remarkably increased electroactive surface area and the superior lithiophilic Ag seeds enable Li stripping/plating mainly inside the ditches. Benefitting from such unique structural design, the ditches-patterned and Ag-modified composite Li anode (D-Ag@Li) achieves excellent cyclability under 2 mA cm^-2 / 4 mAh cm^-2 over 360 h cycling with low nucleation overpotential of 16 mV. Pairing with the D-Ag@Li anode, the full cells with LiNi_0.8 Mn_0.1 Co_0.1 O₂ and LiFePO₄ (LFP) cathodes achieve long cycle life with 94.2% retention after 2000 cycles and 74.2% after 4000 cycles, respectively. Moreover, ultrasonic transmission mapping shows no gas generation for the LFP pouch full cell pouch cell based on D-Ag@Li over prolonged cycling, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the authors' strategy for LMBs.