Chemical Manipulation Towards High Performance Li-S Batteries

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur batteries have been regarded as one of the most promising new battery technologies due to their high theoretical energy density (2600 Wh kg-1) and the abundant resource as well as the low cost of sulfur. However, current sulfur cathodes and lithium metal anodes can’t meet the design requirements for high specific energy batteries. In this talk we will introduce several chemical manipulation methods for high performance Li-S batteries. On the sulfur cathode side, a new reaction pathway is proposed and Se or Te as eutectic accelerator is introduced to boost reaction kinetics. It is possible to eliminate polysulfide dissolution while under the dissolution deposition mechanism and obtain high performance sulfur cathodes compatible with both ether and carbonate electrolytes.[1-5] For lithium metal anodes, we have developed a couple of multifunctional artificial layers through simple and facile chemical methods. The multifunctional layers are beneficial not only for uniform deposition of lithium, but also for prolonged cycling performance.[6-7] With the newly developed anode and cathode materials, a high energy lithium-sulfur battery with significantly improved performance is obtained under the conditions of high areal capacity loading (> 10 mAh cm-2), lead electrolyte (3 ul/mgS) and low N/P ratio (~ 3: 1). The energy density and cycle life are expected to show breakthrough in large Li-S batteries.References Chen, L. Peng, L. Wang, K. Yuan, Y.H. Huang, B. Shan, L.X. Yuan*, and J. Xie*, Nature Communications, 2019, 10, 1021Zhang, Y. Sun, H. Jia, Z. Zhang, B. Shan, and J. Xie*, Energy Storage Materials, 2019, 21, 287-296Li, Z. Han, W. Hu, L. Peng, J. Yang, L. Wang, Y. Zhang, B. Shan and J. Xie*, Nano Energy, 2019, 60, 153-161Li, Z. Zeng, J. Yang, Z. Han, W. Hu, L. Wang, J. Ma, B. Shan and J. Xie*, ACS Applied Energy Materials, 2019, 2(4), 2956-2964Wang, X. Chen, S. Li, J. Yang, Y. Sun, L. Peng, B. Shan and J. Xie*, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, 2019, 7, 12732-12739Jiang, J. Liu, Z. Han, W. Hu, Z. Zeng, Y. Sun and J. Xie*, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2019, 58(33), 11374-11378Jiang, Z. Zeng, C. Yang, Z. Han, W. Hu, J. Lu, and J. Xie*, Nano Letters, 2019, DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.9b03562