Recently, Prof. Le Yu from Beijing University of Chemical Technology and collaborators published a study in Science Advances titled “Atomic Sn incorporated subnanopore-rich hard carbon host for highly reversible quasi-metallic Li storage.”
Research Background
Metallic Li has high capacity (3860 mAh g⁻¹) but faces issues like dendrite growth, volume expansion, and low Coulombic efficiency (CE) due to an unstable Li/electrolyte interface and severe side reactions. Delicate controls for the nucleation and growth of metallic Li using 3D host can suppress the dendrite growth and address the volume expansion. Amongst, hard carbon (HC) is a promising Li host, as its subnanopores store quasi-metallic Li (QM-Li). However, designing porous HC with optimized structure is still quitechallenging.
Achievement Summary
To address the challenge of serious side reactions of Li metal batteries in commercial ester electrolytes, the team has reported subnanopore-rich carbon spheres encapsulated with Sn single atoms (Sn/CS@SC) as Li host (Fig. 1). Owing to the high Li affinity of Sn single atoms, Sn/CS@SC can promote storage of quasi-metallic Li within the inner void space other than direct plating of metallic Li on the outer surface. Moreover, the subnanopores with strong spatial confinement effect can prevent the penetration of ester electrolyte for the reduced side reactions. As expected, the Sn/CS@SC host demonstrates a high CE of 99.8% over 600 cycles. Moreover, a full cell using pre-lithiated Sn/CS@SC anode and LiNi0.8Co0.1Mn0.1O2 cathode shows high-capacity retention (~80%) over 500 cycles at high current density.
Fig. 1. Lithiation processes in CS, Sn/CS and Sn/CS@SC hosts.
Information of corresponding author
Prof Dr Le YU, Deputy Director (Responsible for work) Office of Development Planning and Academic Development of Beijing University of Chemical Technology. His research interests include nanostructured materials for secondary ion batteries, supercapacitors, electrocatalysis. He has authored or co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious journals including Science Advances, Nature Communications, Chem, Joule, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie International Edition with a total citation over 27000. In addition, he was licensed about 10 patents. He was listed as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics in 2018-2024 (Chemistry and Material Science) and Elsevier’s Chinese highly cited scholars list from 2021 to 2024. Professor Yu has led 10 research projects, including the Key Program of the Regional Joint Fund under the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). Currently, he serves as an editorial board member for Acta Physico-Chimica Sinica and as a youth editorial board member for Energy & Environmental Materials, Green Energy & Environment, Chinese Chemical Letters, and Rare Metals. Professor Yu is also a Youth Council Member of the Chinese Society of Particuology.
Research Group Homepage: https://www.x-mol.com/groups/Yu_Le
Article Information
T. Jin, Y. X. Zhang, S. Yuan, L. Yu*,Atomic Sn incorporated subnanopore-rich hard carbon host for highly reversible quasi-metallic Li storage. Sci. Adv.11, eads6483 (2025).
https://www.science.org/doi/epdf/10.1126/sciadv.ads6483