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Lithium metal is regarded as a great promising anode for high energy density lithium-based batteries. Yet its practical application is severely restricted by uncontrollable growth of lithium dendrites and resultant potential safety hazard. Herein, an integrated architecture with 3D micro-nano structured Cu skeleton and crosslinked fluorine (F)-doped carbon nanofiber network (MNCu/FC) is constructed as host for lithium metal anode via a facile and scalable slurry-coating method. The conductive 3D architecture built by Cu skeleton and carbon network effectively promotes charge transfer and inhibits Li dendrites growth. Besides, the crosslinked F-doped carbon nanofibers act as lithiophilic seeds to regulate uniform Li nucleation and deposition, and superior lithiophilicity of F-doped carbon nanofiber is demonstrated via density functional theory calculation. As a result, the 3D MNCu/FC facilitates a dendrite-free lithium metal anode with lower lithium nucleation overpotential and enhanced electrochemical performance in half and full cells compared with bare Cu. Image 1 • Scalable slurry-coating is introduced to construct 3D lithiophilic Li metal host. • F-doped carbon facilitate low nucleation overpotential and uniform Li deposition. • Integrated 3D host offers abundant accommodation sites for Li volume dilatation. • MNCu/FC host displays superior cycling stability and high CEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]