On February 11, according to the Financial Associated Press, engineers at Drexel University in the United States recently made a key breakthrough to solve the biggest obstacle to the large-scale commercial use of lithium-sulfur batteries. At present, the research results have been published in the journal "Communication Chemistry", and a battery that is more environmentally friendly and durable than ordinary lithium batteries is about to be released.
Lithium-sulfur batteries have very great prospects for energy storage, and the world's sulfur reserves are very rich, far exceeding the rare metals cobalt, manganese and nickel. Therefore, the cost of lithium-sulfur batteries will be relatively lower and more environmentally friendly. At the same time, its ability to store electricity is several times that of ordinary lithium batteries, which is one of the important directions for the future development of lithium batteries.
According to the report, the current lithium-sulfur battery faces a major obstacle, the introduction of sulfur in the battery, but it is easy to react with the electrolyte to produce polysulfide compounds, seriously damage the capacity and life of the battery. Scientists have found an ether electrolyte that does not react with sulfur to replace the carbonate electrolyte, although the effect is good, but the ether electrolyte is very volatile, which may cause the battery to fail or melt.
Drexel University engineers, working on another solution, decided to redesign a cathode. Although the experimental process did not achieve the expected effect, a substance called "monoclinic gamma phase sulfur" was accidentally created in the cathode, which does not react with the carbonate electrolyte and does not form polysulfide compounds.
The cathode has undergone 4,000 charge-discharge cycles and up to a year of testing, and is still extremely stable. Engineers used it to create a battery that has three times the capacity of conventional lithium batteries and can provide longer battery life for electric vehicles. Unfortunately, the specific principle of the formation of the substance is not yet understood, and once it can be mass-produced and manufactured, lithium-sulfur batteries will soon be able to mass-produce commercially.
In the past two years, research on new batteries has emerged in an endless stream, such as sodium-ion batteries in the Ningde era, titanium-ion batteries in Gree, and aluminum-ion solid-state batteries in foreign countries. Everyone wants to break free from the circle of lithium-ion batteries and seek breakthroughs in other raw materials. Unfortunately, the above batteries are either inferior to lithium-ion batteries, or far from commercial use, it is difficult to be put into use on a large scale in the short term, or rely on lithium batteries.
The rapid development of the new energy automobile industry has intensified the global demand for lithium batteries. In just one year, the price of lithium battery raw materials has soared 8 times, and the supply is still in short supply. This year, the price of lithium batteries will certainly continue to rise, the corresponding electric vehicles will also increase in price, and the cost of consumers to buy a car has increased. Blowing so many new batteries, I hope that one can really be used soon.