Our joint work with GM on “Cathode porosity is a missing key parameter to optimize lithium-sulfur battery energy density" published on “Nature Communications” was highlighed by MSU Today and Engineering.
For high-energy lithium-sulfur batteries, a dense electrode with low porosity is desired to minimize electrolyte intake, weight, and cost. We demonstrated that the battery discharge performance changed significantly when the porosity in the sulfur/carbon composite cathode dropped from 70 percent to 40 percent. We found the optimum performance occurs with 50 percent porosity determined by modeling and experiments. The work calls the attention of the battery research community to optimize the porosity to balance the performance and energy density of Li-S batteries.
The research started in collaboration with General Motors as part of Lin’s summer internship.
