Thin Solid Electrolyte Separators for Solid-State Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

Soochan Kim; Yvonne A Chart; Sudarshan Narayanan; Mauro Pasta

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04216

Thin Solid Electrolyte Separators for Solid-State Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

Nano Lett. 2022 Dec 28;22(24):10176-10183. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c04216. Epub 2022 Dec 16.

Authors

Soochan Kim^{1

2}, Yvonne A Chart^{1

2}, Sudarshan Narayanan^{1

2}, Mauro Pasta^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3PH, United Kingdom.
² The Faraday Institution, Quad One, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot OX11 0RA, United Kingdom.

Abstract

The lithium-sulfur battery is one of the most promising "beyond Li-ion" battery chemistries owing to its superior gravimetric energy density and low cost. Nonetheless, its commercialization has been hindered by its low cycle life due to the polysulfide shuttle and nonuniform Li-metal plating and stripping. Thin and dense solid electrolyte separators could address these issues without compromising on energy density. Here, we introduce a novel argyrodite (Li₆PS₅Cl)-carboxylated nitrile butadiene rubber (XNBR) composite thin solid electrolyte separator (TSE) (<50 μm) processed by a scalable calendering technique and compatible with Li-metal. When integrated in a full cell with a commercial tape-cast sulfur cathode (3.54 mg_S cm^-2) in the presence of an in situ polymerized lithium bis(fluorosulfonyl)imide-polydioxolane catholyte and a 100 μm Li-metal foil anode, we demonstrate stable cycling for 50 cycles under realistic operating conditions (stack pressure of <1 MPa and 30 °C).

Keywords: Li6PS5Cl; XNBR; solid-state Li−S battery; thin solid electrolyte separator.