Super-aligned carbon nanotube films with a thin metal coating as highly conductive and ultralight current collectors for lithium-ion batteries

Cross-stacked super-aligned carbon nanotube (SACNT) films are promising for use as current collectors in lithium-ion batteries because of their outstanding capability to decrease the weight and thickness of inactive material and strong adhesion to the electrodes. However, the relatively poor conductivity of SACNT films may limit their application to large-size electrodes or at high current rate. Herein, a facile approach is proposed to improve the conductivity of SACNT films by electron-beam deposition of a thin metal film on their surface. Such modification lowers the sheet resistance by three orders of magnitude while keeping the extremely small fraction of SACNT current collectors. The metal-coated SACNT films strongly inhibit polarization during the electrochemical reaction, resulting in improved cell performance compared with that of metal and uncoated CNT current collectors. The improvement in conductivity and cell performance achieved by this approach is so large that the effect of the increase of inactive material is overwhelmed, leading to increased gravimetric energy density.