2024/11/16 by Minghao Zhang, Zhang, Minghao, Karnpiwat Tantratian +23 · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Materials Characterization Techniques #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Nanoporous metals and alloys #Surface and Thin Film Phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.10839
openalex publication_date 2024/11/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
Soft metals like lithium and sodium play a critical role in battery technology owing to their high energy density. Texture formation by grain selection growth of soft metals during electrochemical processes is a crucial factor affecting power and safety. Developing a framework to understand and control grain growth is a multifaceted challenge. Here, a general thermodynamic theory and phase-field model are formulated to study grain selection growth of soft metals. Our study focuses on the interplay between surface energy and atomic mobility-related intrinsic strain energy in grain selection growth. Differences in grain selection growth arise from the anisotropy in surface energy and diffusion barrier of soft metal atoms. Our findings highlight the kinetic limitations of solid-state Li metal batteries, which originate from load stress-induced surface energy anisotropy. These insights lead to the development of an amorphous LixSi1-x (0.50