Ultrahigh-Energy-Density Flexible Lithium-Metal Full Cells based on Conductive Fibrous Skeletons

Abstract

Despite extensive studies on lithium-metal batteries (LMBs) that have garnered considerable attention as a promising high-energy-density system beyond current state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries, their application to flexible power sources is staggering due to the difficulty in simultaneously achieving electrochemical sustainability and mechanical deformability. To address this issue, herein, a new electrode architecture strategy based on conductive fibrous skeletons (CFS) is proposed. Lithium is impregnated into nickel/copper-deposited conductive poly(ethylene terephthalate) nonwovens via electrochemical plating, resulting in self-standing CFS-Li anodes. The CFS-Li anodes exhibit stable Li plating/stripping cyclability and mechanical deformability. To achieve high-capacity flexible cathodes, over-lithiated layered oxide (OLO) particles are compactly embedded in conductive heteronanomats (fibrous mixtures of multiwalled carbon nanotubes and functional polymer nanofibers). The conductive heteronanomats, as CFS of OLO cathodes, provide bicontinuous electron/ion conduction pathways without heavy metallic current collectors and chelate metal ions dissolved from OLO, thus improving the areal capacity, redox kinetics, and cycling retention. Driven by the attractive characteristics of the CFS-Li anodes and CFS-OLO cathodes, the resulting CFS-LMB full cells provide improvements in the cyclability, rate performance, and more notably, (cell-based) gravimetric/volumetric energy density (506 Wh kg(cell)(-1)/765 Wh L-cell(-1)) along with the exceptional mechanical flexibility.