High Area Capacity Lithium-Sulfur Full-cell Battery with Prelitiathed Silicon Nanowire-Carbon Anodes for Long Cycling Stability

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • Andreas Krause
  • Susanne Dörfler
  • Markus Piwko
  • Florian M. Wisser
  • Tony Jaumann
  • Eike Ahrens
  • Lars Giebeler
  • Holger Althues
  • Stefan Schädlich
  • Julia Grothe
  • Andrea Jeffery
  • Matthias Grube
  • Jan Brückner
  • Jan Martin
  • Stefan Kaskel
  • Thomas Mikolajick
  • Walter M. Weber

Organisational units

External Organisational units

  • TU Dresden
  • Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology (IWS)
  • Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, Dresden
  • Namlab GGmbH
  • Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science

Abstract

We show full Li/S cells with the use of balanced and high capacity electrodes to address high power electro-mobile applications. The anode is made of an assembly comprising of silicon nanowires as active material densely and conformally grown on a 3D carbon mesh as a light-weight current collector, offering extremely high areal capacity for reversible Li storage of up to 9 mAh/cm2. The dense growth is guaranteed by a versatile Au precursor developed for homogenous Au layer deposition on 3D substrates. In contrast to metallic Li, the presented system exhibits superior characteristics as an anode in Li/S batteries such as safe operation, long cycle life and easy handling. These anodes are combined with high area density S/C composite cathodes into a Li/S full-cell with an ether- and lithium triflate-based electrolyte for high ionic conductivity. The result is a highly cyclable full-cell with an areal capacity of 2.3 mAh/cm2, a cyclability surpassing 450 cycles and capacity retention of 80% after 150 cycles (capacity loss <0.4% per cycle). A detailed physical and electrochemical investigation of the SiNW Li/S full-cell including in-operando synchrotron X-ray diffraction measurements reveals that the lower degradation is due to a lower self-reduction of polysulfides after continuous charging/discharging.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number27982
Number of pages12
JournalScientific reports (London : Nature Publishing Group)
Volume2016
Issue number6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Jun 2016