Commercial carbon cloth: An emerging substrate for practical lithium metal batteries

Lithium metal anode is regarded as a key part of the next generation battery owing to its high specific energy density and low electrode potential. However, the easily produced lithium dendrite becomes a bottleneck hindering the practical application. Various solutions have been developed to alleviate the above issue, of which introducing carbon-based substrates with a high conductivity has been enormously reported as an effective strategy for regulating the lithium deposition. Meantime, commercial carbon fiber cloth with merits of 3D structure, good flexibility, good electrical conductivity, cheap and self-standing feature is emerging as an ideal choice for practical lithium metal batteries. However, the reviews and perspectives over the lipophilicity modification of carbon cloth-based substrates for advanced lithium metal batteries are still absent. Therefore, we propose this review for summarizing the progress on CC based lithium metal batteries and addressing the perspectives in the near future. In this review, we present three aspects based on the different mechanisms of modification strategies when carbon cloth acts as a host residence for lithium metal anodes. In the first part, the direct use of carbon cloth as a lithium metal anode using SEI and the mechanism of LixC reaction occurring when carbon cloth acts as anode host are described through a section. In the second part, the carbon cloth surface modification strategies using heteroatom doping and functional group introduction as well as the construction of surface nanoscale cracks are described in one section, and their common features are summarized. In the third section, the lithium metal anode modification strategies using lithiophilic but non-reactive materials (CNTs, heteroatom-doped graphene, etc.) and lithiophilic and reactive materials (Zn, ZnO, CuO, CoO, TiO2 etc.) to modify carbon cloth to build surface nanostructures are presented in two sections, and the intrinsic mechanisms are clarified through the same type of work. We conclude that the use of heteroatom doping and nanostructure construction can significantly enhance the lithiophilicity of carbon cloth and will help to improve the long cycle life and post-cycle capacity retention of its symmetric cells.