The Role of Pulse Duty Cycle and Frequency on Dendritic Compression

The formation of dendritic microstructures during the charging period of the battery is a critical phenomenon, hampering the sustainable utilization of energy-dense materials, such as alkaline metals as the electrode. We establish a new experimental setup and measure for tracking the dendritic tendency in real time to quantify the dendritic compression versus the conventional parameters of pulse duty cycle and frequency. In this regard, we close the scale gap between experiments (∼mm, ∼s) and affordable simulations (∼nm, ∼ms) by means of coarse-grained modeling. Analyzing the nonlinear variation of the investigated parameters versus the pulse and rest periods, we explain the limits where they remain effective, based on the formation/relaxation of the respective layers. The obtained results can be useful for designing the dendrite-resilient pulse parameters via the simultaneous utilization of experiments and simulations.