LAUSR

High lithium nucleation overpotential on lithiophobic matrix results in uncontrollable growth of lithium dendrites thus restricts the wide application of lithium metal batteries. Herein, the single atom iron in N-doped carbon matrix (FeSA-N-C) is firstly reported as lithiophilic site to minimize Li nucleation overpotential from 18.6 mV to a very low value of 0.8 mV. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations quantitatively confirmed the excellent affinity between Li ions and FeSA-N-C in atom level. Induced by the homogeneously distributed FeSA-N in the carbon substrate, uniform and stable metallic Li plating/stripping behaviors are realized and lithium dendrite growth is greatly suppressed. The proposed strategy of using single atom iron as lithiophilic sites to minimize lithium nucleation overpotential opens a promising avenue for solving intrinsic problems of Li metal based batteries.