Scalable Study on Nanostructured Carbon –Sulfur Composite Electrodes for High Energy Lithium Sulfur (Li-S) Battery

Abstract

Sulfur is a promising cathode material for lithium sulfur batteries due to its high theoretical capacity (1675 mAh/g). Sulfur cathodes generally suffers from fast capacity degradation and poor Coulombic efficiency originated from the dissolution of intermediate discharge products (polysulfides, Li2S) in the electrolyte. The polysulfide dissolution causes loss of active sulfur and suppresses its deep lithiation, which becomes especially severe during slow charge−discharge processes and deteriorates the electrochemical performances at low cycling rates. Here we report a scalable study on nanostructured carbon-sulfur (S1-x Cx where x=.50,& .40 etc.) composites as a cathode fabricated by ballmiling technique for lithium sulfur battery. To enhance the electrochemical performance of lithium- sulfur battery, carbon black as a conductive material has been dispersed in sulfur. The initial characterization of these nanostructured composites have been performed by XRD, SEM and RAMAN spectroscopy. For electrochemical performance coin cells have been fabricated and are under testing for charge/discharge charcteristics by SOLATRON. Figure 1