New Cathode and Electrolytes Strategies to Enable High-Energy Li-S Batteries

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Lithium–sulfur batteries are attractive alternatives to lithium-ion batteries because of their high theoretical specific energy and natural abundance of sulfur. However, the polysulfides shuttle and the Li metal dendrite and corrosion significantly limit their cycle life. Moreover, the poor electronic conductivity of sulfur results in low areal sulfur loading and poor utilization, leading to low overall specific energy.In the past years, we have developed several new strategies to mitigate these probelms, including: (1) Se doing because of much higher electronic conductivity of Se than Sulfur;[ref 1] (2) new electrolytes to directly bypass polysulfides formation and enable reversible Li stripping/plating;[ref 2 and 3]; (3) rational cathode design to boost sulfur reaction kinetics and suppress polysulfides shuttle and Li corrosion (ref 4 and 5). Through these approaches, we have significantly improve the cycle life and specific energ of Li-S batteries in both coin-cells and pouch-cells.Ref:[1] Xu, G. L.; Ma, T.; Sun, C. J.; Luo, C.; Cheng, L.; Ren, Y.; Heald, S. M.; Wang, C.; Curtiss, L.; Wen, J.; Miller, D. J.; Li, T.; Zuo, X.; Petkov, V.; Chen, Z.*; Amine, K.*, Insight into the Capacity Fading Mechanism of Amorphous Se2S5 Confined in Micro/Mesoporous Carbon Matrix in Ether-Based Electrolytes. Nano Lett., 2016, 16, 2663-2673.[2] Xu, G. L.; Sun, H.; Luo, C.; Estevez, L.; Zhuang, M. H.; Gao, H.; Amine, R.; Wang, H.; Zhang, X.; Sun, C. J.; Liu, Y. Z.; Ren, Y.; Heald, S.; Wang, C. S.; Chen, Z.*; Amine, K.*, Solid-State Lithium/Selenium-Sulfur Chemistry Enabled via a Robust Solid-Electrolyte Interphase. Adv. Energy Mater., 2018, 1802235.[3] Amine, R.; Liu, J.; Acznik, I.; Sheng, T.; Lota, K.; Sun, H.; Sun, C. J.; Fic, K.; Zuo, X.; Ren, Y.; EI-Hady, D. A.; Alshitari, W.; Al-Bogami, A. S.; Chen, Z.; Amine, K. (*) and Xu, G. L. (*). Regulating the Hidden Solvation-Ion-Exchange in Concentrated Electrolytes for Stable and Safe Lithium Metal Batteries. Adv. Energy Mater., 2020, 2000901.[4] Zhao, C.; Xu, G. L.(*); Zhao, T. (*); Amine, K.(*). Beyond Polysulfides Shuttle and Li Dendrite Formation: Addressing the Sluggish S Redox Kinetics for Practical High Energy Li-S batteries. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2020, 17634-17640.[5] Zhao, C.; Xu, G. L.(*); Yu, Z.; Zhang, L.; Hwang, I.; Mo, Y.-X.; Ren, Y.; Cheng, L.; Sun, C. -J.; Ren, Y.; Zuo, X.; Li, J.-T.; Sun, S.-G.; Amine, K.(*) and Zhao, T.(*). A high-energy and long-cycling lithium-sulfur pouch cell via a macroporous catalytic cathode with double-end binding sites. Nature Nanotechnology, 2020, https:// doi .org/ 1 0 . 1 0 3 8 / s 4 1 5 6 5 - 0 2 0 - 0 0 797-w.