Understanding the Correlation between Lithium Dendrite Growth and Local Material Properties by Machine Learning

Lithium metal batteries are attractive for next-generation energy storage because of their high energy density. A major obstacle to their commercialization is the uncontrollable growth of lithium dendrites, which arises from complicated but poorly understood interactions at the electrolyte/electrode interface. In this work, we use a machine learning-based artificial neural network (ANN) model to explore how the lithium growth rate is affected by local material properties, such as surface curvature, ion concentration in the electrolyte, and the lithium growth rates at previous moments. The ion concentration in the electrolyte was acquired by Stimulated Raman Scattering Microscopy, which is often missing in past experimental data-based modeling. The ANN network reached a high correlation coefficient of 0.8 between predicted and experimental values. Further sensitivity analysis based on the ANN model demonstrated that the salt concentration and concentration gradient, as well as the prior lithium growth rate, have the highest impacts on the lithium dendrite growth rate at the next moment. This work shows the potential capability of the ANN model to forecast lithium growth rate, and unveil the inner dependency of the lithium dendrite growth rate on various factors.