Effects of sulfur loading on the corrosion behaviors of metal lithium anode in lithium–sulfur batteries

•The effects of sulfur loading on the corrosion behaviors were investigated systematically.•The corrosion became severer with increasing sulfur loading or cycle times.•The corrosion films are porous and loose and cannot prevent further reaction between lithium and polysulfides.

The corrosion behaviors in rechargeable lithium–sulfur batteries come from the reactions between polysulfides and metal lithium anode, and they are significantly influenced by the sulfur loading. While there are limited papers reported on the effects of sulfur loading on the corrosion behaviors. In this paper, the effects have been investigated systematically. The corrosion films consisted of insulating lithium ion conductors are loose and porous, so that the corrosive reactions cannot be hindered. The thickness of the corrosion layers, consequently, increased along with increasing sulfur loading or cycle times. For instance, the thickness of corrosion layers after 50 cycles was 98 μm in the cell with 5 mg sulfur while it reached up to 518 μm when the loading increased to 15 mg. The continuous deposition of corrosion products gave rise to low active materials utilization and poor cycling performance.

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