Metal Sulfide-Blended Sulfur Cathodes in High Energy Lithium-Sulfur Cells

Lithium-sulfur cells exhibit poor cycle life, due to the well-known 'polysulfide shuttle' enabled by the dissolution of the sulfur reduction products in organic electrolyte. Different strategies have been implemented to reduce the shuttle effects, with limited success, especially through use of low sulfur loadings (1-2 mg/cm(2)). Dense electrodes with high sulfur loadings are essential for high energy cells, however, such electrodes experience more serious polysulfide effects. In this paper, we describe the benefits of blending sulfur with a transition metal sulfide (here, TiS2 and MoS2) to form dense composite cathodes with enhanced conductivity. There is an improvement in both the initial capacity from sulfur utilization (similar to 800 mAh/g based on sulfur content), the coulombic efficiency (>96%) and also in cycle life upon blending with the metal sulfide. High sulfur loadings (>12 mg/cm(2) or similar to 6 mAh/cm(2) per side) were demonstrated to display high sulfur utilization in Li-S cells containing the metal sulfide blends either with or without coatings over the sulfur cathode. XRD studies were carried out to understand the redox behavior of the metal sulfide additive during charge/discharge cycling of the sulfur cathodes. DC polarization and Potentiometric Intermittent Titration Technique (PITT) measurements were made on sulfur cathodes with and without metal sulfide blends to determine the charge transfer and diffusional kinetics. (C) The Author(s) 2016. Published by ECS.