Coated Lithium Powder (CLiP) Electrodes for Lithium-Metal Batteries

Safety issues caused by the metallic lithium inside a battery represent one of the main reasons for the lack of commercial availability of rechargeable lithium‐metal batteries. The advantage of anodes based on coated lithium powder (CLiP), compared to plain lithium foil, include the suppression of dendrite formation, as the local current density during stripping/plating is reduced due to the higher surface area. Another performance and safety advantage of lithium powder is the precisely controlled mass loading of the lithium anode during electrode preparation, giving the opportunity to avoid Li excess in the cell. As an additional benefit, the coating makes electrode manufacturing safer and eases handling. Here, electrodes based on coated lithium powder electrodes (CLiP) are introduced for application in lithium‐metal batteries. These electrodes are compared to lithium foil electrodes with respect to cycling stability, coulombic efficiency of lithium stripping/plating, overpotential, and morphology changes during cycling. Electrodes made of coated lithium powder particles (CLiP) have the advantage that they suppress dendrite formation. Due to a higher surface area, the effective current density on the electrode surface is much lower compared to lithium metal. This fact makes lithium powder particles safer than the commonly used lithium metal foil for applications in lithium metal cells.