Hosting Ultrahigh Areal Capacity and Dendrite-free Lithium via Porous Scaffold

Lithium (Li) metal is one of the most attractive anode materials for next-generation energy storage batteries. However, the undesirable Li dendrite growth usually leads to low Coulombic efficiency (CE) and safety hazards. Here, we employ reduced graphene oxide (rGO) infiltrated Ni foam (rGO@Ni) as a three-dimensional (3D) current collector to suppress Li dendrites. After Ni foam is soaked up with rGO, the enlarged working area conduces to a low local effective current density and a homogeneous Li deposition, therefore rendering a dendrite-free morphology. Compared with the Cu foil and Ni foam electrodes, the rGO@Ni electrode achieves enhanced CE and longer cycle life. Even for an extreme areal capacity of 20 mAh cm^-2, so far the highest areal capacity has been reported in the literatures, the rGO@Ni current collector not only merely still functions after 50 cycles, but also delivers an enhanced CE of above 95%. Moreover, the symmetrical cell runs for 1100 h without fluctuation. The exceptional electrochemical performance of the rGO@Ni current collector indicates a rosy prospect for the remedy of the dendrite problem. Hopefully, this study can shed light on further commercialization of Li metal-based batteries.