Porous Organic Cage-Based Quasi-Solid-State Electrolyte with Cavity-Induced Anion-Trapping Effect for Long-Life Lithium Metal Batteries

Porous organic cages (POCs) with permanent porosity and excellent host-guest property hold great potentials in regulating ion transport behavior, yet their feasibility as solid-state electrolytes has never been testified in a practical battery. Herein, we design and fabricate a quasi-solid-state electrolyte (QSSE) based on a POC to enable the stable operation of Li-metal batteries (LMBs). Benefiting from the ordered channels and cavity-induced anion-trapping effect of POC, the resulting POC-based QSSE exhibits a high Li⁺ transference number of 0.67 and a high ionic conductivity of 1.25 × 10^-4 S cm^-1 with a low activation energy of 0.17 eV. These allow for homogeneous Li deposition and highly reversible Li plating/stripping for over 2000 h. As a proof of concept, the LMB assembled with POC-based QSSE demonstrates extremely stable cycling performance with 85% capacity retention after 1000 cycles. Therefore, our work demonstrates the practical applicability of POC as SSEs for LMBs and could be extended to other energy-storage systems, such as Na and K batteries.