High-energy sustainable Lithium Sulfur batteries for electrical vehicles and renewable energy applications - Development of innovative electrodes

This dissertation comprehensively speaks about the state of research in Li/S electrochemical system. Li-ion batteries are all over in gadgets, laptops and almost in every portable consumer electronics. But, future energy storage demand for electrical mobility and smart grids asking for much higher energy density, sustainable and cheaper solutions. Lithium-sulfur (Li/S) technology is one of the promising solutions to such demands as it can offer five times high energy density than that of state of art Li-ion technology. Li/S system can be potentially regarded as a sustainable and cheaper technology owing to abundancy and benignity of sulfur. However, the insulating nature of sulfur and Li2S, free solubility of lithium polysulfide (LiPS) in the electrolyte, shuttling of LiPS across separator and use of metallic lithium as anode challenge the scientific community to offer some practical solutions for its commercialization . The effort can be done in various dimensions to realize stable and long-life Li/S batteries. Various startegies have been proposed to realize efficient and stable sulfur and silicon electrodes. In the end, a Li metal free Si/S full cell has been realized.