Electrochemical properties of lithium sulfur battery with silicon anodes lithiated by direct contact method

Abstract

It is hard to employ the carbon materials or the lithium metal foil for the anode of lithium sulfur batteries because of the poor passivation in ether-based electrolytes and the formation of lithium dendrites, respectively. Herein, we investigated the electrochemical characteristics of lithium sulfur batteries with lithiated silicon anode in the liquid electrolytes based on ether solvents. The silicon anodes were lithiated by direct contact with lithium foil in a 1M lithium bis(trifluoromethane sulfonyl) imide (LiTFSI) solution in 1,2-dimethoxyethane (DME) and 1,3-dioxolane (DOL) at a volume ratio of 1:1. They were readily lithiated up to ~40% of their theoretical capacity with a 30 min contact time. In particular, the carbon mesh reported in our previous work was employed in order to maximize the performance by capturing the dissolved polysulfide in sulfur cathode. The reversible specific capacity of the lithiated silicon-sulfur batteries with carbon mesh was 1,129 mAh/g during the first cycle, and was maintained at 297 mAh/g even after 50 cycles at 0.2 C, without any problems of poor passivation or lithium dendrite formation.