Regulating the morphology of lithium plating is the key to extending the cycle life of lithium metal batteries. Fatal dendritic growth is closely related to out-of-plane nucleation on the lithium metal surface. Herein, we report a nearly perfect lattice match between the lithium metal foil and lithium deposits by removing the native oxide layer using simple bromine-based acid-base chemistry. The naked lithium surface induces homo-epitaxial lithium plating with columnar morphologies and lower overpotentials. Using the naked lithium foil, the lithium-lithium symmetric cell maintains stable cycling at 10 mA cm-2 for more than 10,000 cycles, and the full-cell paired with LiFePO4 with high areal capacity of 3.3 mAh cm-2 and practical N/P ratio of 2.5 exhibits 86% capacity retention after 300 cycles. This study elucidates the usefulness of controlling the initial surface state to facilitate homo-epitaxial lithium plating for sustainable cycling of lithium metal batteries.
© 2023. The Author(s).