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From ion to atom to dendrite: Formation and nanomechanical behavior of electrodeposited lithium

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Abstract

Development of high energy density solid-state batteries with Li metal anodes has been limited by uncontrollable growth of Li dendrites in liquid and solid electrolytes (SEs). This, in part, may be caused by a dearth of information about mechanical properties of Li, especially at the nano- and microlength scales and microstructures relevant to Li batteries. We investigate Li electrodeposited in a commercial LiCoO2/LiPON/Cu solid-state thin-film cell, grown in situ in a scanning electron microscope equipped with nanomechanical capabilities. Experiments demonstrate that Li was preferentially deposited at the LiPON/Cu interface along the valleys that mimic the domain boundaries of underlying LiCoO2 (cathode). Cryogenic electron microscopy analysis of electrodeposited Li revealed a single-crystalline microstructure, and in situ nanocompression experiments on nano-pillars with 360–759 nm diameters revealed their average Young’s modulus to be 6.76 ± 2.88 GPa with an average yield stress of 16.0 ± 6.82 MPa, ~24x higher than what has been reported for bulk polycrystalline Li. We discuss mechanical deformation mechanisms, stiffness, and strength of nano-sized electrodeposited Li in the framework of its microstructure and dislocation-governed nanoscale plasticity of crystals, and place it in the parameter space of existing knowledge on small-scale Li mechanics. The enhanced strength of Li at small scales may explain why it can penetrate and fracture through much stiffer and harder SEs than theoretically predicted.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the generous financial support from the ARPA-E IDEAS Grant No. DE-AR0000884. Part of J.B.’s contribution was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344. We also acknowledge A. Malyutin and S. Mageswaran for their help and discussions on performing TEM, and O. Tertuliano, C. Portela, and J. Zhang for their invaluable help and discussions about the mechanical experiments. The authors acknowledge X. Xia for his help with the SEM electrochemical experiments. J.B. acknowledges useful discussions with A. Fang.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Science and Technology, USA

    Michael A. Citrin, Heng Yang & Julia R. Greer

  2. Front Edge Technology, Baldwin Park, USA

    Simon K. Nieh

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, USA

    Joel Berry

  4. Materials Science Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, USA

    Joel Berry

  5. Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of California, Irvine, USA

    Wenpei Gao & Xiaoqing Pan

  6. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, USA

    Xiaoqing Pan

  7. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

    David J. Srolovitz

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  1. Michael A. Citrin
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Supplementary material

Supplementary material

The supplementary material for this article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2020.148

Supplementary Video 1

Video of a uniaxial compression experiment of a 622-nm diameter, 2.42-μm tall electrodeposited Li pillar deformed at a prescribed loading rate of 0.5 μN/s. The video is sped up 10×.

Supplementary Video 2

Video of a uniaxial compression experiment of a 721-nm diameter, 3.41-μm tall electrodeposited Li pillar deformed at a prescribed displacement rate of 2.5 nm/s. The video is sped up 10×.

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Citrin, M.A., Yang, H., Nieh, S.K. et al. From ion to atom to dendrite: Formation and nanomechanical behavior of electrodeposited lithium. MRS Bulletin 45, 891–904 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1557/mrs.2020.148

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