Co-Electrodeposition Mechanism in Rechargeable Metal Batteries

Metal-anode-based batteries, owing to their high energy densities, enable long-range electric vehicles and semi trucks. Controlling the electrodeposition growth during charging at practical rates remains a challenge. Incorporating an additive cation in the electrolyte offers an approach to address this through co-electrodeposition which can tune the nucleation and the surface diffusion processes at the growth front. This opens new design possibilities to address the dendrite challenge. In this work, we develop a mesoscale formalism to study the co-electrodeposition mechanism and analyze the underlying electrolyte design, material selection, and electrochemical complexations governing the composition and morphological evolution. We delineate stable regimes of nucleation and electrodeposition that can be attained by tailoring the surface diffusion and electrochemical reaction kinetics. We believe that this study provides the basis for future experiments to rationalize trends in metal co-electrodeposition.