Ionic-additive Crosslinked Polymeric Sulfur Composites as Cathode Materials for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are one of attractive energy conversion and storage system based on high theoretical specific capacity and energy density with low costs. However, volatile nature of elemental sulfur is one of critical problem for their practical acceptance in industry because it considerably affects electrode uniformity during electrode manufacturing. In this work, polymeric sulfur composite consisting of ionic liquid (IL) are suggested to reduce volatility nature of elemental sulfur, resulting in better processibility of the Li-S cell. According to systematic spectroscopic analysis, it is found that polymeric sulfur is consisting of repeating units combining with elemental sulfur and volatility of them is negligible even at high temperature. In addition, the IL-embedded polymeric sulfur shows moderate cycle performance compared to the cell with elemental sulfur. From these results, it is found that the IL-embedded polymeric sulfur composite is applicable cathode candidate for the Li-S cell based on their excellent non-volatility as well as their superior electrochemical performance.