Interface engineering of lithium metal anodes via atomic and molecular layer deposition

Abstract

Rechargeable batteries are playing an ever-increasing important role in our society. Their performance (such as cell cyclability, safety, and lifespan) is critical for their applications. Among the various factors related to cell performance, interfaces, which ubiquitously exist between an electrode and an electrolyte, have some significant functions. They mostly evolve and degrade with cell cycling. Thus, an ideal interface should be physically and electrochemically stable and able to provide a compatible environment for electrolytes and electrodes in cells. To this end, interface engineering is needed and has become an important area. It has been achieved via different strategies. In the last decade, atomic layer deposition (ALD) has emerged as a new strategy. It enables accurate interface modification via coating electrodes with desirable inorganic films at the atomic level and has created a long coating list to date. Complementarily, molecular layer deposition (MLD) extends the list to organic and organic–inorganic hybrid coatings. More amazingly, their combinations could further make the list uncountable. Owing to numerous efforts using ALD and MLD for advancing lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), there has recently been an ever-growing interest in lithium metal batteries (LMBs). In this review, we focus on summarizing the studies addressing the most forbidding issues of lithium metal anodes in LMBs using ALD and MLD. The inherent merits of ALD and MLD have made them two irreplaceable tools for opening up new technical avenues to commercialize LMBs.