Lithium Fiber Growth on the Anode in a Nanowire Lithium Ion Battery During Charging

Lithium (Li) dendrite formation has been recognized as one of the major safety concerns for Li metal batteries but not for conventional Li ion batteries (LIBs) where Li metal is not used. With the advanced in situ transmission electron microscopy enabling direct observation of battery operation, we found that Li fibers with length up to 35 μm grew on nanowire tip after charging. The Li fibers growth were highly directional, i.e., nucleating from the nanowire tip, and extending along the nanowire axis, which was attributed to the strong electric field enhancement effect induced by the sharp nanowire tip. This study reveals a potential safety concern of short-circuit failure for LIBs using nanowire anodes.

[1]  Sehee Lee,et al.  Ultrathin Direct Atomic Layer Deposition on Composite Electrodes for Highly Durable and Safe Li‐Ion Batteries , 2010, Advanced materials.

[2]  Mijung Noh,et al.  Critical Size of a Nano SnO2 Electrode for Li-Secondary Battery , 2005 .

[3]  R. Rosenfeld.  Nature , 2009, Otolaryngology--head and neck surgery : official journal of American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

[4]  L. Enze.  The distribution function of surface charge density with respect to surface curvature , 1986 .

[5]  M. Armand,et al.  Building better batteries , 2008, Nature.

[6]  Yoji Sakurai,et al.  Safety characteristics of rechargeable lithium metal cells , 1997 .

[7]  John P. Sullivan,et al.  In Situ Observation of the Electrochemical Lithiation of a Single SnO2 Nanowire Electrode , 2010, Science.

[8]  Jean-Marie Tarascon,et al.  In situ Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) observation of interfaces within plastic lithium batteries , 1998 .

[9]  C. Hidalgo,et al.  Positron-annihilation studies of a superplastic Al-Ca-Zn alloy , 1986 .

[10]  David Wexler,et al.  Highly reversible lithium storage in spheroidal carbon-coated silicon nanocomposites as anodes for lithium-ion batteries. , 2006, Angewandte Chemie.

[11]  G. Yushin,et al.  High-performance lithium-ion anodes using a hierarchical bottom-up approach. , 2010, Nature materials.

[12]  Hailong Chen,et al.  In situ NMR observation of the formation of metallic lithium microstructures in lithium batteries. , 2010, Nature materials.

[13]  Kyoung-Shin Choi,et al.  Elucidation of an overpotential-limited branching phenomenon observed during the electrocrystallization of cuprous oxide. , 2008, Angewandte Chemie.

[14]  B. McCloskey,et al.  Lithium−Air Battery: Promise and Challenges , 2010 .

[15]  Jean-Marie Tarascon,et al.  Dendrite short-circuit and fuse effect on Li/polymer/Li cells , 2006 .

[16]  Ran Liu,et al.  Controlled electrochemical synthesis of conductive polymer nanotube structures. , 2007, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[17]  P. Bruce,et al.  Nanostructured materials for advanced energy conversion and storage devices , 2005, Nature materials.

[18]  Jean-Marie Tarascon,et al.  Live Scanning Electron Microscope Observations of Dendritic Growth in Lithium/Polymer Cells , 2002 .

[19]  L Enze,et al.  The application of a surface charge density distribution function to the solution of boundary value problems , 1987 .