Nitrogen-doped Porous Carbon Nanofibers Decorated with Nickel Nanoparticles for Unlocking Low-cost Structural Lithium Metal Anodes

Lithium metal anode has received increasing attention. However, safety issues arising from lithium dendrite growth have limited the commercialization of lithium metal anodes. Herein, a porous carbon nanofiber framework decorated with nickel nanoparticles was designed as a 3D conductive host by simple electrospinning technique to solve the above problem. Uniformly dispersed nickel nanoparticles on N-doped carbon fibers can expose more active sites to trap lithium ions. The design of the Ni/N co-doping structure can effectively improve its lithiophilicity. In addition, the 3D porous conductive structure facilitates electron transport and can effectively decrease the local current density to suppress the formation and generation of lithium dendrites. The combined results of experiments and density functional theory calculations show that carbon nanofibers decorated with Ni nanoparticles have stronger adsorption ability for lithium, thus resulting in more uniform plating. This work provides inspiration for designing low-cost and dendrite-free structural lithium metal anode hosts.