Understanding and suppression strategies toward stable Li metal anode for safe lithium batteries

Abstract Recently, the technology of lithium metal-based batteries has devoted substantial importance with suggesting the great potential for power sources that could promise the revolution of electric vehicle (EV) and power grid. It is expected to overcome the challenges and barriers experienced during the use of these high energy density batteries in the desired large-scale applications such as hybrid electric vehicle (HEV), plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) and pure electric vehicle (PEV). Apart from the high energy density and enormous applications of Li-ion batteries, still there are some issues affecting the rate capability, performance, safety and cost due to dendritic growth during cycling of lithium batteries. Therefore, it is generous worthy to provide existing and timely apprises of constantly improving techniques to diminish the dendrites formation, especially for the metallic Li anode, because dendritic growth is the main problem that inhibits the commercial applications of lithium metal batteries in regular portable electronics to EV. In this review, we concisely summarize the fundamentals, existing issues, solid electrolyte interphases (SEI) on lithium metal anode, insight understanding and growth of dendritic structure and morphologies. Moreover, different prevention techniques for dendrites suppression, and some significant remarks are provided for future research and development of advanced dendrite free Li metal batteries for safe and potential use in the electric vehicles and also in high load-leveling applications.