Wide temperature range adaptable electric field driven binder for advanced lithium-sulfur batteries.

Jiang, Wanyuan; Jin, Xin; Li, Borui; Qu, Yunpeng; Wang, Lin; Song, Ce; Pei, Mengfan; Zhang, Tianpeng et al. · Nat Commun · 2025

basic_science · Level V

Where this comes from

Abstract

Stable operation over wide temperature ranges is still a great challenge for lithium-sulfur batteries facing actual operating environments. Electrocatalysis is an effective strategy to address the sluggish reaction kinetics of lithium polysulfides at low temperatures and exacerbated shuttling effect at high temperatures; however, its practicality is still restricted by the structural stability of the support electrodes. In this work, a binder with wide temperature range adaptability is designed with a structure-modulated stable electrocatalytic mechanism, which can achieve effective adsorption and accelerated conversion of lithium polysulfides, and high-temperature self-repair and low-temperature internal support of electrodes. Lithium-sulfur batteries with the binder have a specific capacity of 780 mAh g<sup>-1</sup> (5 C, 8375 mA g<sup>-1</sup>), and 470 mAh g<sup>-1</sup> (0.1 C, 167.5 mA g<sup>-1</sup>) even at -40 °C. This work realizes the stable operation across a temperature range of 100 °C solely by the innovative development of binder, which provides a unique perspective for wide-temperature range lithium-sulfur battery design.