Engineering of lithiophilic hosts for stable lithium metal anodes

Lithium (Li0) metal has been deemed the desired anode for the future of cutting-edge rechargeable Li batteries benefiting from its lowest reduction potential and ultrahigh theoretical specific capacity. Nevertheless, the large-scale applications of Li metal batteries are restricted by scattered Li dendrite formation and uncontrollable volume expansion. To address these issues, a currently prevalent measure is to use structured lithiophilic hosts for Li metal. The enhanced lithiophilicity of hosts is significant for regulating the Li nucleation barrier. By virtue of these lithiophilic measures, the Li nucleation sites will be well controlled and the Li plating layer will be more stable. Through this article, we classified various lithiophilic hosts and described their applications for Li metal batteries, including heteroatom-doping carbon, lithiophilic-material loading hosts and gradient skeletons. We discussed the inherent advantages and lithophilic mechanisms of these hosts on optimizing the lithophilic properties and analyzed various factors that induced the formation of dendrite Li. Moreover, the review outlines the current challenges and perspectives for Li metal anodes, and some understanding of the lithiophilic chemistry is given.