A carbon cloth-based lithium composite anode for high-performance lithium metal batteries

The two most challenging issues for Li metal based battery are infinite volume change during uneven deposition/dissolution process and the growth of Li dendrite. Therefore, the Li metal battery exhibits poor cycling life span and even the safety issue. Here we developed a facile method to prepare dendrite-mitigation Li composite electrode (Li@CC) using commercial carbon cloth as the interfacial layer between Li metal anode and the electrolyte without pre-stored Li process in carbonate-based electrolyte. The Li@CC symmetrical cells exhibit highly reduced polarization (150 mV) and stable cycling performance (> 200 cycles) at a high current density of 5 mA cm(-2). Furthermore, the Li@CC composite anode based full cell with limited Li and moderately high loading cathode exhibits longer cycling life span, better rate performance, lower and more stable polarization than that of bare Li anode. Especially, the Li@CC-Li4Ti5O12 full cell delivers an excellent cycling performance of 700 cycles with capacity retention of over 80%, which shows dozens of times' improvement than that of full cell based on bare Li. We believe that the high performance are due to the unique characteristics of carbon cloth such as the high conductivity, enlarged surface area and intrinsic pore structure consisted of thin crystalline graphite sheets. The high performance results with the commercial available carbon cloth can not only offer a competitive approach for industry application of Li metal battery, but also be used for other metal based energy devices.