Researcher(s)
- Connor McCleery, Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware
Faculty Mentor(s)
- Bingqing Wei, Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware
Abstract
Lithium sulfur (LiS) batteries are a promising alternative to the rechargeable energy industry, offering higher energy density and lower materials cost. Practical applications have been limited due to functional issues with the LiS battery including the so-called shuttle effect in which polysulfides from the cathode side of the battery diffuse to the anode side, allowing them to react directly with the lithium. This severely limits cycling stability and cycle lifetime. Numerous methods have been proposed to prevent the shuttle including implementing a ferroelectric framework into the cathode material so as to attract the polysulfide molecules through the induced electric field. This proposed solution has the benefit of being relatively easy to implement into industrial production as it requires only the addition of another material into the cathode slurry during casting. This work aims to optimize this solution by determining a correlation between the cathode constituent ratios during slurry synthesis and the performance of the battery in terms of cycling stability longevity. Using barium titanate oxide (BTO) nanoparticles as the ferroelectric material, several electrode batches were synthesized and underwent galvanostatic charge/discharge cycling which were ultimately compared against one another.