Inhibiting the growth of lithium dendrites by employing the anodic aluminum oxide membrane

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20292818

Along with the development of the technology and the increasingly, continuous consumption of the fuel resources. Electrical vehicles seem to be a viable candidate to solve the energy shortage problem. However, the insufficient energy storage impedes the development of the electrical vehicles. The problems of the current lithium-ion battery are the low energy density limited by the graphite anode, and the growth of lithium dendrites which utilizes lithium metal as anode will lead to severe safety issues. This thesis aims to improve the performance and the safety of the lithium metal batteries by employing the anodic aluminum oxide membranes (AAO). It is proved that the coin cells with AAO membrane show much better performance than the bare Li Cu coin cell. It can help the coin cell improve the stability and inhibit the growth of the lithium dendrites. The 20 nm pore size AAO membrane show better performance than that with 35 nm pore size, in which the coin cell with 20 nm AAO membrane can operate over 100 cycles with the columbic efficiency above 90% at 1.0 mA, while the one with 35 nm can only sustain the columbic efficiency above 90% for about 50 cycles. In addition, the symmetric Li Li coin cell with 20 nm AAO membranes show a much lower overpotential (0.5 V to -0.3 V) than that without AAO membranes (0.05 V to 0.2 V). It means that the lithium is easier to be extracted from under SEI. Therefore, SEI could be more stable and sustain for a longer time, which leads to a stable and high columbic efficiency battery.