Design of safe, long-cycling and high-energy lithium metal anodes in all working conditions: Progress, challenges and perspectives

Lithium (Li) metal is a ?superstar ? among all the anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) owing to its low electrochemical potential, high theoretical specific capacity, low density, etc. The inherent issues of Li metal anodes including high chemical activity, uncontrollable growth of Li dendrites, large volume changes, and unstable solid electrolyte interphase (SEI) have been gradually improved in the past several years. However, most of the previous study on Li-metal anodes is performed at room temperature under inert atmosphere. The stability and behavior of Li-metal anode in extreme conditions such as air, water, and high/low temperatures are easy to be ignored. Improving the stability of Li-metal anodes in extreme conditions is meaningful for constructing safe, long-cycling, low-cost, and high-energy Li-metal batteries in all working conditions. Tremendous work has been conducted to enable stable Li-metal anodes in extreme conditions recently. Here we carefully present a review for stable Li-metal anodes in extreme conditions. The backgrounds of Li-metal anodes and strategies for achieving stable Li-metal anodes in extreme conditions are carefully summarized. Meanwhile, we proposed some outlooks and perspectives. We hope this review can make more researchers pay attention to Li-metal anodes in extreme conditions.

Automated summary

The review discusses the stability issues of lithium-metal anodes in extreme conditions and proposes strategies for improvement, aiming to draw more attention from researchers.