The Lithium Metal Battery (LMB) differs from the traditional lithium ion battery in that it uses Metallic Lithium as the anode. Widely regarded as the next-generation battery system thanks to their intrinsically high energy density, however, these batteries have a trade-off between energy density and cycle life.
CATL are saying they have a major breakthrough in Lithium Metal Batteries [1, 2].
They tracked the evolution of active lithium and each electrolyte component throughout the battery’s life cycle and found that the dominant cause of cell failure is not:
- solvent breakdown
- dead lithium accumulation (see Study of Lithium Plating in Commercial Cells for how this shows up in commercial cells)
- solvation environment disruption
The cause of failure was the continuous consumption of the electrolyte salt LiFSI, with 71% of it consumed by end of life.
References
- CATL Achieves Breakthrough in Lithium Metal Battery Research, Published in Nature Nanotechnology, CATL
- Wang, H., Yan, X., Zhang, R. et al. Application-driven design of non-aqueous electrolyte solutions through quantification of interfacial reactions in lithium metal batteries. Nat. Nanotechnol. (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-025-01935-y
See also: SES 50Ah Lithium Metal Cell