Flexible and stable high-energy lithium-sulfur full batteries with only 100% oversized lithium

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 4480 - 11
• Main Authors: Chang, Jian, Shang, Jian, Sun, Yongming, Ono, Luis K., Wang, Dongrui, Ma, Zhijun, Huang, Qiyao, Chen, Dongdong, Liu, Guoqiang, Cui, Yi, Qi, Yabing, Zheng, Zijian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 26.10.2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 140/133; 147/135; 639/301; 639/4077; Batteries; Carbon; Electrode materials; Electrodes; ENERGY STORAGE; Fabrics; Flux density; Humanities and Social Sciences; Lithium; Lithium sulfur batteries; Local current; multidisciplinary; Nickel; Radius of curvature; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Stability; Storage batteries; Sulfur; Wearable technology
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06879-7

Lightweight and flexible energy storage devices are urgently needed to persistently power wearable devices, and lithium-sulfur batteries are promising technologies due to their low mass densities and high theoretical capacities. Here we report a flexible and high-energy lithium-sulfur full battery device with only 100% oversized lithium, enabled by rationally designed copper-coated and nickel-coated carbon fabrics as excellent hosts for lithium and sulfur, respectively. These metallic carbon fabrics endow mechanical flexibility, reduce local current density of the electrodes, and, more importantly, significantly stabilize the electrode materials to reach remarkable Coulombic efficiency of >99.89% for a lithium anode and >99.82% for a sulfur cathode over 400 half-cell charge-discharge cycles. Consequently, the assembled lithium-sulfur full battery provides high areal capacity (3 mA h cm −2 ), high cell energy density (288 W h kg −1 and 360 W h L −1 ), excellent cycling stability (260 cycles), and remarkable bending stability at a small radius of curvature (<1 mm). Lightweight and flexible energy storage devices are needed to persistently power wearable devices. Here the authors employ metallized carbon fabrics as hosts for sulfur and lithium to achieve flexibility, electrochemical stability and high energy density in a lithium-sulfur battery.