Stabilizing Li-S Battery Through Multilayer Encapsulation of Sulfur

Advancements in portable electronic devices and electric powered transportation has drawn more attention to high energy density batteries, especially lithium-sulfur batteries due to the low cost of sulfur and its high energy density. However, the lithium-sulfur battery is still quite far from commercialization mostly because of incompatibility between all major components of the battery-the cathode, anode, and electrolyte. Here a methodology is demonstrated that shows promise in significantly improving battery stability by multilayer encapsulation of sulfur particles, while using conventional electrolytes, which allows a long cycle life and an improved Coulombic efficiency battery at low electrolyte feeding. The multilayer encapsulated sulfur battery demonstrates a Coulombic efficiency as high as 98%, when a binder-free electrode is used. It is also shown that the all-out self-discharge of the cell after 168 h can be reduced from 34% in the regular sulfur battery to less than 9% in the battery with the multilayer encapsulated sulfur electrode.