Lithiophilic seeds and rigid arrays synergistic induced dendrite-free and stable Li anode towards long-life lithium-oxygen batteries

The enhanced lithiophilic properties and the rigid array structure of Al 2 O 3 -CNTA/3DG synergistically induce dendrite-free and stable Li anode. The LOBs full battery assembled with the Al 2 O 3 -CNTA/3DG-Li anode and CNTA/3DG cathode achieves a long-term cycling stability. High energy density lithium-oxygen battery (LOB) is currently regraded as a promising candidate for next-generation power system. However, the dendrite and instability issues of Li metal anode lead to its poor cyclic stability and low energy density. In this work, lithiophilic Al 2 O 3 seeds induced rigid carbon nanotube arrays (CNTA)/three-dimensional graphene (3DG) is developed as a host material for Li anode, namely Al 2 O 3 -CNTA/3DG. It is demonstrated that the lithiophilic feature of Al 2 O 3 seeds and the enhanced rigidity of arrays can synergistically induce the uniform Li flux, inhibit the collapse of arrays, and stabilize electrolyte/electrode interfaces. As a result, the Al 2 O 3 -CNTA/3DG-Li anode delivers a high Coulombic efficiency above 97% after 140 cycles (8 mAh cm −2 at 4 mA cm −2 ). With this anode and the breathable CNTA/3DG cathode, the full LOB exhibits a significantly increased life-span up to 160 cycles (500 mAh g −1 at 100 mA g −1 ), which is almost 3 times longer than that with pure Li foil as the anodes. This work demonstrates a new approach to highly reversibly long-cycling performance of LOBs towards practical application.