Lithium-sulfur battery with orange flavour

Korean researchers have developed a new type of lithium-sulfur battery with a 20% improvement in performance using...vitamin C.

5/31/15 5:00 am chumakdenis 1

Not only is vitamic C useful for people, but it's also good for electric vehicles.

A Korean researchers led by Professor Lee Jae-young at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology have developed all-new battery with bitter flavour that shows 20% improvement in performance over current Li-S batteries.

As scientists say,it has become possible because of treating dual-layered graphene-sulfur. 

A few words about Li-S batteries

Lithium-sulfur batteries are widely considered as a viable replacement for current lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles because of its superior energy density. Yet, lithium-sulfur batteries have not been actively used in the field yet since there are a few problems to be resolved such as poor cycle performance and low charge/discharge rates.

Nevertheless, the researchers showed that their vitamin C treated dual-layered cathode, which is composed of a sulfur active layer and a polysulfide absorption layer, can increase sulfur utilization dramatically resulting in a lithium-sulfur battery with a high specific capacity of over 600 mAh gsulfur (-1) after 100 cycles even under a high current rate of 1C.

Professor Lee said, “This development is meaningful in a sense that it can greatly improve low cycle performance of lithium-sulfur batteries, which is a big obstacle to commercialization of them,” adding, “we expect the new development will practically increase the adaptation of lithium-sulfur batteries to next-generation electric car batteries.”

The results of the development were published in the online version of ChemSusChem on April 29 with the title of " Improvement of energy capacity via Vitamin C-treated dual-layered graphene-sulfur cathodes in lithium sulfur battery ".