Sunday, January 4, 2015

Future Batteries: Lithium-Sulfur with a Graphene Wrapper

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What do you get when you wrap a thin sheet of the "wonder material" graphene around a novel multifunctional sulfur electrode that combines an energy storage unit and electron/ion transfer networks? An extremely promising electrode structure design for rechargeable lithium-sulfur batteries.



Lithium-sulfur batteries are of great commercial interest because they boast theoretical specific energy densities considerably greater than those of their already-well-established cousin, lithium ion batteries.



In the journal APL Materials, from AIP Publishing, a team of researchers led by Dr. Vasant Kumar at the University of Cambridge and Professor Renjie Chen at the Beijing Institute of Technology describe their design of a multifunctional sulfur cathode at the nanolevel to address performance-related issues such as low efficiency and capacity degradation.



Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted plenty of attention recently, thanks to wide-ranging applications in hydrogen storage, carbon dioxide sequestration, catalysis and membranes. And to create their cathode, the team tapped MOF "as a template" to produce a conductive porous carbon cage -- in which sulfur acts as the host and each sulfur-carbon nanoparticle acts as energy storage units where electrochemical reactions occur.






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Reposted via Next Big Future

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