Metallic lithium is regarded as one of the most promising electrode materials to break through the energy density bottleneck of current commercial lithium-ion batteries. However, the practical implementation of lithium metal anode is limited by the unstable electrode interface significantly, which directly induces a low Coulombic efficiency, short cycling lifespan, and dendritic lithium growth behavior. In this study, via in situ electropolymerization, lithiophilic and conformal polyaniline layer is developed to improve the initial lithium nucleation and plating process, reducing the interface charge transfer resistance and promoting uniform lithium plating/stripping behavior. Meanwhile, the polyaniline layer exhibits good adhesion to the substrate. As a result, the Li/Cu half cell delivers a high Coulombic efficiency of 99.1% for 400 cycles at 1.0 mA·cm⁻² with polyaniline layer. In addition, long-term stable cycling at a current density of 1.0 mA·cm⁻² for 1300 h has been achieved for lithium metal anode. This strategy provides a new perspective for the practical lithium metal batteries.

Catalytic reduction of molecular dinitrogen (N₂) to ammonia (NH₃) is one of the most important and challenging industrial reactions. Electrochemical reduction is considered as an energy-saving technology for artificial ambient nitrogen fixation, which is emerging as an optimal potential sustainable strategy to substitute for the Haber–Bosch process. However, this process demands efficient catalysts for the N₂ reduction reaction (NRR). Here, by means of first-principles calculations, we systematically explored the potential electrocatalytic performance of single transition metal atoms (Pd, Ag, Rh, Cu, Ti, Mo, Mn, Zn, Fe, Co, Ru, and Pt) embedded in monolayer defective boron phosphide (TMs/BP) monolayer with a phosphorus monovacancy for ambient NH₃ production. Among them, the Mo/BP exhibits the best catalytic performance for ambient reduction of N₂ through the typical enzymatic and consecutive reaction pathways with an activation barrier of 0.68 eV, indicating that Mo/BP is an efficient catalyst for N₂ fixation. We believe that this work could provide a new avenue of ambient NH₃ synthesis by using the designed single-atom electrocatalysts.