Building electrode skins for ultra-stable potassium metal batteries

In nature, the human body is a perfect self-organizing and self-repairing system, with the skin protecting the internal organs and tissues from external damages. In this work, inspired by the human skin, we design a metal electrode skin (MES) to protect the metal interface. MES can increase the flatness of electrode and uniform the electric field distribution, inhibiting the growth of dendrites. In detail, an artificial film made of fluorinated graphene oxide serves as the first protection layer. At molecular level, fluorine is released and in-situ formed a robust SEI as the second protection "skin" for metal anode. As a result, Cu@MES || K asymmetric cell is able to achieve an unprecedented cycle life (over 1600 cycles). More impressively, the full cell of K@MES || Prussian blue exhibits a long cycle lifespan over 5000 cycles. This work illustrates a mechanism for metal electrode protection and provides a strategy for the applying bionics in batteries.

Hongbo Ding, Jue Wang, Jiang Zhou, Chengxin Wang, Bingan Lu