Horizontal Centripetal Plating in the Patterned Voids of Li/Graphene Composites for Stable Lithium-Metal Anodes

Lithium (Li) metal, the anode of choice for its high energy density, was used before the 1990s but was abandoned because of its dendrite formation. There are many strategies to address the dendrite problems, but the Li growth direction is largely normal to the anodes and there are still chances that the dendrites can cross over the separator. Here, we fundamentally suppress dendrites by designing horizontal centripetal Li plating. In patterned reduced graphene oxide (rGO)/Li anodes, the electric field is detoured to the edges of the patterned anodes. Li nucleates at the void edges of the layered Li separated by rGO sheets and grows horizontal centripetally to fill the voids. The patterned rGO/ Li anodes were cycled for more than 2,000 hr and maintained stable voltage profiles at a current density of 10 mA cm(-2). We anticipate that the horizontal centripetally grown behavior could revolutionize the design of high-performance Li-metal batteries.