Pulse Charging Strategies in Lithium Metal Batteries

Pulse charging has been shown to suppress dendrite formation in lithium metal batteries. This phenomenon was discovered using a computational particle based reaction-diffusion model and later validated experimentally. Pulsing gives lithium ions more time to diffuse before they react with the electrode surface resulting in more uniform deposition. The comparative benefit of pulse charging versus constant voltage charging, however, has not yet been analyzed within this theoretical framework. We propose a new measure of efficacy that defines the most effective charging strategy to be the one that yields the lowest level of dendrite intensity for a fixed charging time. Application of this efficacy criteria to the simplified reaction-diffusion model of the charging process used previously allows the merits of a variety of different charging strategies to be evaluated.