The present invention provides a battery or
supercapacitor current collector which is prelithiated. The prelithiated
current collector comprises: (a) an
electrically conductive substrate having two opposed primary surfaces, and (b) a mixture layer of carbon (and / or other stabilizing element, such as B, Al, Ga, In, C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb, As, Sb, Bi, Te, or a combination thereof) and
lithium or
lithium alloy coated on at least one of the primary surfaces, wherein
lithium element is present in an amount of 1% to 99% by weight of the mixture layer. This
current collector serves as an effective and safe lithium source for a wide variety of
electrochemical energy storage cells, including the rechargeable lithium
cell (e.g. lithium-
metal, lithium-
ion, lithium-
sulfur, lithium-air, lithium-
graphene, lithium-carbon, and lithium-
carbon nanotube cell) and the lithium
ion based
supercapacitor cell (e.g, symmetric ultracapacitor, asymmetric ultracapacitor,
hybrid supercapacitor-battery, or lithium-
ion capacitor).