Ionic liquid-based electrolyte with binary lithium salts for high performance lithium-sulfur batteries

Rechargeable Li-S batteries have suffered several technical obstacles, such as rapid capacity fading and low coulombic efficiency. To overcome these problems, we design new electrolytes containing N-methoxyethyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)-imide (Pyr(1,201)TFSI) and tri(ethylene glycol)dimethyl ether (TEGDME) in mass ratio of 7:3. Moreover, Lithium difluoro(oxalate)borate (LiODFB) is introduced for the modification. Although the addition of LiODFB as additive lead to extremely high viscosity of electrolyte and inferior performance of the cells, the electrolyte containing lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI, 0.84 nm) and LiODFB (0.60 nm) mixture with a total molar concentration of 0.4 mol kg(-1) as binary lithium salt shows excellent electrochemical performance. The Pyr(1,201)TFSI/TEGDME electrolyte with LiTFSI/LiODFB binary lithium salts in mole ratio of 6:4 is obtained after optimizing ratio. The Li-S cells containing this electrolyte system show excellent capacity and cycle performance, whose initial discharge capacity is 1264.4 mAh g(-1), and retains 911.4 mAh after 50 cycles with the coulombic efficiency more than 95%. It can be attributed the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI)-forming ability of LiODFB which protect Li anode from suffering lithium dendrites and prevent the shuttle phenomenon. The novel electrolytes provide good cycling stability and high coulombic efficiency for the Li-S batteries, which is suggested as a promising electrolyte for Li-S batteries. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.