Unravelling the room-temperature atomic structure and growth kinetics of lithium metal

Chao Liang, Xun Zhang, Shuixin Xia, Zeyu Wang, Jiayi Wu, Biao Yuan, Xin Luo, Weiyan Liu, Wei Liu and Yi Yu ()
Additional contact information
Chao Liang: ShanghaiTech University
Xun Zhang: ShanghaiTech University
Shuixin Xia: ShanghaiTech University
Zeyu Wang: ShanghaiTech University
Jiayi Wu: ShanghaiTech University
Biao Yuan: ShanghaiTech University
Xin Luo: ShanghaiTech University
Weiyan Liu: ShanghaiTech University
Wei Liu: ShanghaiTech University
Yi Yu: ShanghaiTech University

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Alkali metals are widely studied in various fields such as medicine and battery. However, limited by the chemical reactivity and electron/ion beam sensitivity, the intrinsic atomic structure of alkali metals and its fundamental properties are difficult to be revealed. Here, a simple and versatile method is proposed to form the alkali metals in situ inside the transmission electron microscope. Taking alkali salts as the starting materials and electron beam as the trigger, alkali metals can be obtained directly. With this method, atomic resolution imaging of lithium and sodium metal is achieved at room temperature, and the growth of alkali metals is visualized at atomic-scale with millisecond temporal resolution. Furthermore, our observations unravel the ambiguities in lithium metal growth on garnet-type solid electrolytes for lithium-metal batteries. Finally, our method enables a direct study of physical contact property of lithium metal as well as its surface passivation oxide layer, which may contribute to better understanding of lithium dendrite and solid electrolyte interphase issues in lithium ion batteries.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19206-w Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-19206-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19206-w

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().