A Versatile Strategy to Fabricate 3D Conductive Frameworks for Lithium Metal Anodes

The suppression of lithium dendrite is critical to the realization of lithium metal batteries. 3D conductive framework, among different approaches, has shown very promising results in dendrite suppression. A novel cost-effective and versatile dip-coating method is presented here to make 3D conductive framework. Various substrates with different geometries are coated successfully with copper, including electrically insulating glass fiber (GF) or rice paper and conducting Ni foam. In particular, the as-prepared copper coated GF shows promising results to serve as the lithium metal substrate by the electrochemical battery tests. The method significantly broadens the candidate materials database for 3D conductive framework to include all kinds of intrinsically insulating 3D substrates.