Xuezhe Wei

All articles published by MDPI are made immediately available worldwide under an open access license. No special permission is required to reuse all or part of the article published by MDPI, including figures and tables. For articles published under an open access Creative Common CC BY license, any part of the article may be reused without permission provided that the original article is clearly cited. For more information, please refer to https://www.mdpi.com/openaccess.

Highlights • “Dead lithium” is discovered during the lithium plating process • Uneven lithium deposition occurs at different current densities • A positive feedback mechanism leading to uneven lithium deposition is revealed • Improving the surface quality of electrodes can suppress the growth of dendrites Summary Understanding the mechanism of non-uniform deposition of lithium and dendrite growth is necessary for battery degradation and safety performance improvement.