 | By incorporating solid-state electrolytes in battery design, KFUPM researchers have utilized a sulfur-carbon composite to improve the performance of traditional All-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries (ASLBs). This can be a promising alternative to replace commercial liquid Li-ion batteries by alleviating the safety concerns typically associated with them. Commercial batteries use organic liquid electrolytes, which are flammable and emit toxic smoke when exposed to the environment. When a battery cell is charged too rapidly, it might short circuit, resulting in explosions and fires. Some companies have issued battery-related recalls, such as the 2016 Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall due to battery fires. As a result, they are harmful in a variety of applications. A solid-state battery is an emerging field that uses solid electrolytes (oxides and sulfides) to facilitate ion transfer as opposed to using liquid electrolytes. This improves the safety of these devices as solid electrolyte materials such as oxides are highly stable even at very high temperatures up to 1000 °C. The main aim is to synthesize solid materials to replace liquid electrolytes while retaining a high ion transfer efficiency. |
All-solid-state lithium-sulfur batteries (ASLBs) have the potential to achieve high energy density because of sulfur’s high theoretical capacity (1672 mAh g–1) while alleviating persistent polysulfide shuttling inherent to lithium-sulfur batteries based on liquid organic electrolyte. However, the homogenization of sulfur, carbon, and solid electrolytes is a challenge to achieving high-performance cathodes for ASLBs, in terms of low specific capacity and low-rate performance as demonstrated in the literature. Dr. Atif’s team was able to demonstrate promising sulfur–carbon composite with high sulfur content (71.4–83.3%) prepared using a sulfur vapor deposition (SVD) approach to show enhanced discharge-specific capacities, rate performance, and cycling stability, outperforming conventional sulfur liquid deposition (SLD) and sulfur solid deposition (SSD) approach. This alleviates the homogeneity concerns. They achieved a higher discharge-specific sulfur capacity of 1792.6 mAh g–1 at 0.1C and 60 °C, in contrast to 1619.2 and 1329.3 mAh g–1 for samples prepared by conventional SLD and SSD approaches, respectively. The improved electrochemical performance using the vapor deposition method has been attributed to the homogeneous distribution, the physical and deep confinement of sulfur particles, and the smaller sulfur particle size in porous carbon. The vapor deposition of sulfur within porous carbon has been identified as a promising method for the fabrication of sulfur–carbon composites for ASLBs, outperforming conventional liquid and solid sulfur deposition approaches. These findings are extremely encouraging and demonstrate the potential of solid-state batteries in situations where safety is a significant concern. |