Short communicationA proof-of-concept lithium/sulfur liquid battery with exceptionally high capacity density
Highlights
► A Li/S liquid cell with two-layer structural cathode is proposed for high capacity density. ► Initial mixing state of sulfur and carbon in cathode is not important for a Li/S liquid cell. ► High surface area carbon and solvent with high polysulfide solubility favor cell performance. ► Effective improvement on Li/S cell should be on the Li anode, instead of the cathode.
Section snippets
Experimental
Carbon cloth (CC, E-Tek, V2.02) and activated carbon cloth (ACC, Maxwell Tech.) were punched into small circular disks with an area of 1.27 cm2 and used as the cathode current collector. Using phase inversion method [25], porous sulfur paper consisting of 90 wt.% sulfur and 10 wt.% binder was prepared by a general procedure as follows: Calculated amount of sulfur powder (>99.5%, Aldrich) was added to a 5 wt.% solution of Kynar FlexTM 2801, a poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene)
Results and discussion
Fig. 1 shows the images of a highly porous sulfur paper made by the phase inversion method. Similar to those observed from the pure Kynar polymer membrane, the sulfur paper has relatively dense surface and highly porous body [25]. As an indication of the highly porous structure, the sulfur paper immediately gets wetted and swollen upon contact with any liquid electrolytes. Except for the high porosity, the sulfur paper is neither electronically conductive nor ionically conductive.
Fig. 2 shows a
Conclusions
This work demonstrates that the rechargeable Li/S liquid cells having exceptionally high capacity density can be made by starting with a high sulfur loading cathode. Initial mixing state of the sulfur and carbon in the cathode is not important as the PS active species eventually dissolve into liquid electrolyte. For a cell with sufficient amount of sulfur, its capacity is determined by the porosity of carbon electrode and the dissolution capability of PS in liquid electrolyte while the cycle
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. R.Z. Jiang of the fuel cell team for supplying carbon cloth.
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