Metallic Organic Framework (MOF) Applications in Novel Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

Abstract

Today lithium-ion batteries are the basis of portable energy source. Wildly used in electronic devices and electric vehicles lithium-ion type of batteries became a standard. Despite good electrochemical performance and their universality, fast development of the market for efficient power sources makes them unable to meet this challenge. As a promising competitor or even a successor of lithium-ion batteries often named are lithium-sulfur batteries. It’s mostly because of their high specific capacity (1675 mAh g-1) and relatively big deposit of sulfur on Earth. The main reason, why this type of batteries is not commercialized yet is the problem with the application and stability of the sulfur electrode. The expansion of the sulfur when charging, its insulation and dissolution in organic solvents from the electrolyte, resulting the creation of polysulfides chains, are the remaining problems to solve before lithium-sulfur batteries could be spread in the commerce devices. To solve these issues many additives and compounds have been examined. One of the idea is to use metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) as a sulfur host on the electrode. Because of the porosity of the structure of these materials they are able to “hold” sulfur inside them. Not only it improves the electronic conductivity but also can be a solution to reduce the electrode expansion and sulfur reactions with electrolyte. This report presents a few methods of the possible ways of doping MOFs with sulfur and electrode slurry preparation. All the research was made in cooperation of Warsaw University of Technology from Poland and NTNU and SINTEF from Norway in M-ERA.NET 2 MOGLiS project.