According to foreign media reports, among many exciting chemicals in the next generation battery, lithium-sulfur battery is a kind of chemical with great potential, because its energy storage capacity is five times that of current lithium-ion battery. Australian scientists have proposed a new design for this promising structure, including adding sugar to solve the inherent stability problem. It is reported that this move has made the experimental battery run more than 1000 times.

Although the high capacity of lithium-sulfur batteries is the mainstream application that scientists have been trying to develop, the stability problem has been hindering their development. Because the positive sulfur electrode of the battery will expand and contract during charging, it will be subjected to great pressure and deteriorate rapidly. At the same time, the negative electrode is polluted by sulfur-containing compounds.

Last year, a battery research team at Monash University in Melbourne proposed a solution that solved half of this problem. This group of scientists has developed a special adhesive that can create extra space around sulfur particles, which means that they have more space to expand safely during charging. The result is a high-capacity lithium-sulfur battery that can be recycled for more than 200 times.

Now, scientists aim at the other side of the equation, that is, the negative lithium electrode, which is "suffocated" by sulfur. This breakthrough comes from a study in 1988, which shows that some sugar-based substances can prevent the degradation of geological sediments and promote the strong combination between sulfides.

The goal of scientists is to apply this method to lithium-sulfur batteries to prevent sulfur chains (called polysulfides) from being released from the positive electrode, which tend to move on the negative electrode and form moss. The research team introduced a sugar-based additive into the mesh structure of the electrode as a binder to form a mesh microstructure, which can help regulate the behavior of annoying polysulfides. The experimental battery with sugar additive shows a capacity of about 700 mAh/g, which can maintain 1000 cycles.

Yingyi Huang, the first author of this research paper and a doctoral student, said, "In this way, each charge can last longer and prolong the life of the battery. In addition, the manufacture of batteries does not require foreign, toxic and expensive materials. "

There are still some problems to be solved before lithium-sulfur batteries are applied to smart phones and electric vehicles. Researchers say that their technology has the potential to store 2 to 5 times the energy of current lithium batteries. Through this new research, I believe they have taken a key step towards real-world applications.