Morphometry of Dendritic Materials in Rechargeable Batteries

The formation of highly-branched dendrites during the charging period of the rechargeable batteries is a critical safety drawback, causing capacity decay in particular during utilization of high energy-density metallic elements as electrode. We develop a comparative framework for predicting the branching tendency of the conventional metallic candidates (Li,Na,Mg & Zn) in connection with their inherent material properties as well as representative spatial variants. Our framework covers the kinetic aspect of the electrodeposition, where the brownian motion leads to the formation randomly-branched microstructures. The ionic species are reduced in the proximity of the dendrite body and turn into the atom with the success probability derived from the electron transfer principles. Our development has been carried out in the atomic scale (∼Å) and the time interval of inter-ionic collisions (∼ps) and the determining sub-factors leading to branched evolution are analyzed separately. The results provide intuitive understanding for the effective utilization of the electrode materials in rechargeable batteries based on the given specific application, such as magnitude of the charge carriers, the applied current density or the thickness of the formed microstructures.