A New Lamination and doping Concepts for Enhanced Li – S Battery Performance
- Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
Lithium ion batteries (LIBs) clearly dominated the area of high-energy storage systems for the past decade with significant research and development activity focused on the development of cathode and anode materials to maximize the specific energy storage, stability, and cycle life of the batteries. However, with the increasing demand in the EV industry for low cost, low weight, and high-energy storage batteries to meet the EV everywhere grand challenge, the current focus of research has shifted towards the development of lithium sulfur batteries (LSB) owing to the high theoretical specific capacity exhibited by sulfur compared to other cathode materials currently available. Li–S battery shows a theoretical capacity of 1675 mAh/g corresponding to the formation of Li2S which makes sulfur a promising electrode to replace the layered transition metal oxides (~150 mAh/g) and LiFePO4 (~170 mAh/g) hitherto deployed in present LIB systems. Moreover, the abundance of sulfur in the earth’s crust makes it a more economical and highly attractive proposition compared to currently existing cathodes. Despite advantages of sulfur, the existing Li-S battery technology display poor cyclability, low coulombic efficiency (CE) and very low cycle life due to the following issues: 1. Polysulfide (PS) dissolution; 2. Sluggish kinetics of PS to Li2S conversion; 3. High PS diffusivity in the electrolyte; 4. Insulating nature or poor conductivity of sulfur/Li2S; 5. Volumetric expansion/contraction of sulfur; 6. Shuttling of PS along with Li+. These issues result in loss of sulfur causing mechanical disintegration, surface passivation of both anode and cathode, thereby decreasing the specific capacity and columbic efficiency (CE). Present generation sulfur cathodes also show low specific storage capacity, very poor charging rates and low loading densities. Research is needed to overcome the issues impeding Li-S battery technology development.
- Research Organization:
- Univ. of Pittsburgh, PA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0006825
- OSTI ID:
- 1417532
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-UPITT-EE0006825
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
Multifunctional transitional metal-based phosphide nanoparticles towards improved polysulfide confinement and redox kinetics for highly stable lithium-sulfur batteries
Lithium–Sulfur Batteries with Micelle-Structured Electrolytes and Imide-Based Salts