Annealing kinetics of electrodeposited lithium dendrites

The densifying kinetics of lithium dendrites is characterized with effective activation energy of E-a approximate to 6 - 7 kcal mol(-1) in our experiments and molecular dynamics computations. We show that heating lithium dendrites for 55 degrees C reduces the representative dendrites length (lambda) over bar (T, t) up to 36%. NVT reactive force field simulations on three-dimensional glass phase dendrites produced by our coarse grained Monte Carlo method reveal that for any given initial dendrite morphology, there is a unique stable atomic arrangement for a certain range of temperature, combined with rapid morphological transition (similar to 10 ps) within quasi-stable states involving concurrent bulk and surface diffusions. Our results are useful for predicting the inherent structural characteristics of lithium dendrites such as dominant coordination number. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.