ABSTRACT In pursuing a fully electrified society, rechargeable batteries have become a commodity related to national security and prosperity. While state‐of‐the‐art lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) are dominating portable electronics and quickly penetrating the market of electric vehicles, they also have become insufficient in energy density, cost, safety, and lifetime. To this end, new electrode chemistries are undergoing intensive investigation for next‐generation LIBs and beyond technologies. Among potential anodes, silicon (Si), lithium (Li) metal, and sodium (Na) metal are among the most promising ones, ascribed to their extremely high capacities. On the cathode side, layer‐structured metal oxides are still very compelling. However, all these electrode materials suffer from a series of issues, which hinder them from commercialization. Among various strategies to tackle these issues, surface modification is facile and effective for improving electrodes' performance, highly depending on the properties and quality of surface coatings. In this respect, molecular layer deposition (MLD) recently has emerged as a new technique enabling novel polymeric coatings, featuring its high‐quality film coverage, unrivaled uniform and conformal coating, moderate process temperatures, and extremely accurate film growth at the molecular level. In this review, we present a comprehensive review on the MLD's latest applications for surface modification of next‐generation high‐energy LIBs, Li metal batteries (LMBs), Na‐based batteries, and solid‐state batteries. We expect that this article would ignite new sparks on searching novel solutions of emerging battery systems using MLD.
Xiangbo Meng (Sat,) studied this question.