Operando Characterization of Active Surface Area and Passivation Effects on Sulfur-Carbon Composites for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

Li, HeUniversity of Southampton; North China Electric Power University (författare)

Sulfur electrodes for lithium-sulfur batteries necessarily contain a conductive additive,typically carbon, to enable the electrochemical reactions, since sulfur and the dischargeproduct, Li2S, are insulators. Consequently, the full passivation of carbon, by depositionof sulfur and/or Li2S, would necessarily produce the death of the battery. However, herewe demonstrate that for high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries operated under leanelectrolyte conditions (electrolyte to sulfur ratio of 6 µL mgS-1 in Li-S coin cells), theextent of passivation of carbon is not severe enough to limit performance. This is shownby performing impedance measurements of fully charged lithium-sulfur batteries, fromwhich we demonstrate that we can evaluate the specific surface area of carbon, and wefind that the capacity fade with cycling is not due to a decrease in the electrochemicallyactive specific surface area of carbon. These results show that introducing a higher sur-face area carbon in the sulfur electrode formulation is not needed to prevent passivation,and that the focus of lithium-sulfur development should be directed towards other is-sues, such as mitigating undesirable reactions at the lithium electrode and achievingrobust sulfur electrode structures enabling fast transport of electrolyte species and, thus,more homogeneous reactions.

Lampkin, JohnUniversity of Southampton (författare)
Chien, Yu-Chuan,1990-Uppsala universitet,Strukturkemi(Swepub:uu)yucch451 (författare)
Furness, LiamUniversity of Southampton; The Faraday Institution, Harwell Campus, Didcot, United Kingdom (författare)
Brandell, Daniel,1975-Uppsala universitet,Strukturkemi(Swepub:uu)dbr10334 (författare)
Lacey, MatthewUppsala universitet,Strukturkemi,Scania CV AB(Swepub:uu)matla332 (författare)
Garcia-Araez, NuriaUniversity of Southampton; The Faraday Institution, Harwell Campus, Didcot, United Kingdom (författare)
University of Southampton; North China Electric Power UniversityUniversity of Southampton (creator_code:org_t)

Av författaren/redakt...: Li, He; Lampkin, John; Chien, Yu-Chuan, ...; Furness, Liam; Brandell, Daniel ...; Lacey, Matthew; visa fler...; Garcia-Araez, Nu ...; visa färre...

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