Powder-sintering derived 3D porous current collector for stable lithium metal anode

Lithium metal, own to high capacity, negative potential and good conductivity, has a huge application prospect for next-generation lithium batteries. Nevertheless, its commercialization is largely hindered by volume expansion and Li dendrites. In this work, we employ a low-cost and scalable powder-sintering method to obtain 3D porous Cu-Zn alloy, which can be used as a host material to induce dendrite-free Li deposition. 3D porous Cu-Zn alloy renders high surface areas, uniform spatial structure and even the good lithiophilicity, resulting in low Li deposition interface energy and low lithium deposition barrier. As a result, 3D porous Cu-Zn alloy electrode exhibits a superior Coulombic efficiency of 98.3% for 160 cycles at 1.0 mA/cm(2), whereas the Coulombic efficiency of Cu foil electrode quickly drops to less than 80.0% only after 55 cycles. In addition, 3D porous Cu-Zn alloy electrode still runs stably for 45 cycles at 10.0 mA/cm(2), and even at a high deposition capacity of 5.0 mAh/cm(2). Therefore, powder-sintering derived 3D porous Cu-Zn alloy may provide innovative insights of electrode designs for next-generation metallic lithium anodes. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.