A New Type of Electrolyte System To Suppress Polysulfide Dissolution for Lithium-Sulfur Battery

Tingzhou Yang; Tao Qian; Jie Liu; Na Xu; Yutao Li; Nicholas Grundish; Chenglin Yan; John B Goodenough

doi:10.1021/acsnano.9b03304

A New Type of Electrolyte System To Suppress Polysulfide Dissolution for Lithium-Sulfur Battery

ACS Nano. 2019 Aug 27;13(8):9067-9073. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.9b03304. Epub 2019 Jul 24.

Authors

Tingzhou Yang¹, Tao Qian¹, Jie Liu¹, Na Xu¹, Yutao Li², Nicholas Grundish², Chenglin Yan¹, John B Goodenough²

Affiliations

¹ College of Energy, Key Laboratory of Advanced Carbon Materials and Wearable Energy Technologies of Jiangsu Province, Key Laboratory of Advanced Optical Manufacturing Technologies of Jiangsu Province, and Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Technologies of Education Ministry of China , Soochow University , Suzhou 215006 , People's Republic of China.
² Materials Science and Engineering Program and Texas Materials Institute , The University of Texas at Austin , Austin , Texas 78712 , United States.

PMID: 31339690
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b03304

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have been explored extensively for high-capacity electric-power storage, but their practical application has been prevented by severe issues stemming from the use of a lithium anode and an organic-liquid electrolyte in which Li₂S_x intermediates of the cell discharge reaction are soluble and shuttle to the anode. Both problems are addressed using bis(4-nitrophenyl) carbonate as an additive in the organic-liquid electrolyte. The soluble Li₂S_x polysulfides react with the additive to create insoluble polysulfides with a lithium byproduct; this byproduct reacts with the Li-metal anode to create an anode passivation layer that is a good Li⁺ conductor, which allows for safe and rapid plating/stripping of lithium metal with a low impedance.

Keywords: battery cycle life; electrolyte system; lithium polysulfide; lithium−sulfur battery; solid−electrolyte interphase (SEI).