Low volume change composite lithium metal anodes

The ramified growth of lithium dendrites and their enormous volume change upon cycling bear the primary responsibility for the poor cyclability and serious safety of lithium metal batteries. Herein, a low volume change composite lithium metal anode is realized by encaging Li into a hybrid host featuring a 3D conducing scaffold with a metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) coating. The scaffold with high pore volume is favorable to accommodate Li with high areal capacity and alleviate the variation in electrode dimensions. The MOFs layer with abundant interconnected micropores serving as ion sieve can boost uniform distribution of Li ions while its high Young's modulus ( > 32 GPa) can arrest dendrite propagation. The thus-formed anode displays a negligible dimension variation ( < 5%), enabling stable cycling in both symmetric cells ( > 1000 h) and full cells ( > 200 cycle-life). This study may open up new directions to construct safe Li metal batteries through an industry-adoptable technology.