Safe and durable high-temperature lithium-sulfur batteries

Safety has always been a major concern for electric vehicles, especially preventing fire and explosion incidents with the best possible battery technologies.

Lithium-sulfur batteries are considered as the most promising candidate for EVs due to their ultra-high energy density, which is over 5 times the capacity of standard commercial Li-ion batteries. However, batteries operating at the high temperatures necessary in electric vehicles presents a safety challenge, as fire and other incidents become more likely.

Team of researchers from Western Ontario, in collaboration with researchers from the Canadian Light Source, have developed safe and durable high-temperature Li-S batteries using by a new coating technique called molecular layer deposition (MLD) technology for the first time.

MLD is an ultrathin-film technique with applications in energy storage systems, providing precise and flexible control over film thickness and chemical composition of the target material at a molecular scale. The MLD alucone coated carbon-sulfur electrodes demonstrated very stable and improved performance at temperatures as high as 55oC, which will significantly prolong battery life for high-temperature Li-S batteries.

Read more at Canadian Light Source

Image Credit: Canadian Light Source

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