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research article

Monolayer Amorphous Carbon: Unlocking Disorder‐Induced Lithiophilicity

Shi, Lu
•
Zhang, Hanning  
•
Grebenko, Artem K.
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November 25, 2025
Advanced Science

Dendritic lithium growth on the current collector remains a major obstacle to developing anode‐less batteries, arising from inhomogeneous lithium nucleation and uneven surface lithiophilicity. Existing approaches, such as metallic or carbonaceous interlayers, often fail to stabilize lithium deposition due to mechanical degradation or spatial variations in lithium affinity. Here, we demonstrate that a monolayer amorphous carbon (MAC) film—a single‐atom‐thick disordered sp 2 network grown directly on copper—can fundamentally alter lithium nucleation behavior. The topological disorder of MAC produces a dense distribution of electron‐rich sites that uniformly strengthen lithium binding. As a result, the MAC surface exhibits a lithium contact angle of 31 ± 5°, four times lower than that of graphene and nearly three times lower than that of bare copper, leading to homogeneous wetting and deposition. Electrochemical tests reveal a reduced nucleation overpotential of 28.9 mV at 0.5 mA cm −2 . Density functional theory and scanning tunneling microscopy confirm that disorder‐induced localization of states near the Fermi level enhances electronegativity and forms continuous lithium‐binding sites. These findings establish intrinsic structural disorder, rather than chemical doping, as an effective route to designing uniformly lithiophilic current collectors for next‐generation anode‐less batteries.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1002/advs.202516490
Author(s)
Shi, Lu
Zhang, Hanning  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Grebenko, Artem K.
Yamaletdinov, Ruslan  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

SK, Rejaul
Shivajirao, Ranjith
Tong, Zheng Jue
Luchkin, Sergey
Zhang, Hongji
Iakoubovskii, Konstantin V.
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Date Issued

2025-11-25

Publisher

Wiley

Published in
Advanced Science
Article Number

e16490

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
C3MP  
FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Japan Science and Technology Agency

JPMJCR20B1

Ministry of Education - Singapore

MOE‐MOET32023‐0003

Economic Development Board - Singapore

S22‐19013‐STDP

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Available on Infoscience
November 26, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/256351
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