Title: Sowing Silver Seeds within Patterned Ditches for Dendrite-Free Lithium Metal Batteries

Abstract: The interfacial instability of lithium (Li) metal is one of the critical challenges, which hinders the application of rechargeable Li metal batteries (LMBs). Designing facile and effective surface/interface is extremely important for practical LMBs manufacturing. Here, a highly stable Li anode with silver nanowires sowed in the patterned ditches via a simple calendaring process is developed. The remarkably increased electroactive surface area and the superior lithiophilic Ag seeds enable Li stripping/plating mainly inside the ditches. Benefitting from such unique structural design, the ditches-patterned and Ag-modified composite Li anode (D-Ag@Li) achieves excellent cyclability under 2 mA cm⁻² / 4 mAh cm⁻² over 360 h cycling with low nucleation overpotential of 16 mV. Pairing with the D-Ag@Li anode, the full cells with LiNi_0.8Mn_0.1Co_0.1O₂ and LiFePO₄ (LFP) cathodes achieve long cycle life with 94.2% retention after 2000 cycles and 74.2% after 4000 cycles, respectively. Moreover, ultrasonic transmission mapping shows no gas generation for the LFP pouch full cell pouch cell based on D-Ag@Li over prolonged cycling, demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of the authors' strategy for LMBs.