Carbon coated lithium sulfide particles for lithium battery cathodes

Jeong S., Bresser D., Buchholz D., Winter M., Passerini S.

Abstract

In this paper, we investigated the properties of carbon coated lithium sulfide particles prepared following either a dry coating process or a wet coating process, using, respectively, sucrose or polyacrylonitrile (PAN) as carbon source. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the crystalline structure of the pristine Li2S was basically preserved upon both coating processes. The dry coating process (Li2S-Csucrose) resulted in Li2S particles covered only partially by smaller carbon particles, whereas the wet coating method (Li2S-CPAN) gave Li2S particles, homogenously decorated with thin carbon flakes. As a result, the cycling performance of Li2S-C based electrodes was significantly improved, particularly for Li2S-CPAN, for which a coulombic efficiency of more than 99.5% was obtained. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.