Biomimetic Spring Effect Construction to Stabilize Electrode/Electrolyte Interface for High-Performance Lithium Metal...

Lithium (Li) metal anode is the most promising anode for the next-generation high-energy storage batteries due to its high theoretical specific capacity and low redox potential, while its commercial application is plagued by notorious dendrite formation and instable electrode/electrolyte interface degradation. Inspired by the spring effect of cholesterol (Ch) in phospholipid bilayers to maintain cytomembrane structure, a self-assembled biomimetic spring (SABS) layer is constructed as an artificial solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) layer on Li anode through electrolyte additive engineering. SABS layer is self-assembled by the reaction of hydroxyl group with Li anode and the intertwining of rigid region with SEI, which can resist volume change of Li anode during plating/stripping processes to maintain SEI structure and induce the uniform deposition to hinder dendrite growth. As a result, Li anode with SABS displays stable plating/stripping reversibility and long cycle-life over 4800 h. Li-S full battery with SABS still retains a capacity of 410 mAh g^-1 after 900 cycles at a current density of 1C and exhibits excellent rate performance of 390 mAh g^-1 even at 3C. This work opens a new avenue to stabilize electrode/electrolyte interface via biomimetic spring effect for achieving high-performance Li metal anodes.