Lithiophilic CuO Nanoflowers on Ti-Mesh Inducing Lithium Lateral Plating Enabling Stable Lithium-Metal Anodes with Ultrahigh Rates and Ultralong Cycle Life

Lithium (Li) metal anodes are promising candidates for high-energy-density batteries. However, uncontrollable dendritic plating behavior and infinite volume expansion are hindering their practical applications. Herein, a novel CuO@Ti-mesh (CTM) is prepared by microwave-assisted reactions, followed by pressing on Li wafers, leading to Li/CuO@Ti-mesh (LCTM) composite anodes. The lithiophilic CuO nanoflowers on Ti-mesh provides evenly distributed nucleation sites, inducing uniform Li-ion lateral plating, which can effectively inhibit the growth of Li dendrites and volume expansion during cycling. The as-prepared LCTM composite anode exhibits high Coulombic efficiency (CE) of 94.2% at 10 mA cm(-2) over 90 cycles. Meanwhile, the LCTM anode shows a low overpotential of 50 mV at 10 mA cm(-2) over 16 000 cycles and a low overpotential of 90 and 250 mV even at ultrahigh current densities of 20 and 40 mA cm(-2). When paired with Li4Ti5O12 (LTO), it enhances the capacity retention of LTO/Li wafer full cells by about two times from 36.6% to 73.0% and 42.0% to 80.0% at 5C and 10C with long-term cycling. It is hoped that this LCTM anode with ultrahigh rates and ultralong cycle life may put Li-metal anode forward to practical applications, such as in Li-S, Li-air batteries, etc.