Lithium sulfur and lithium oxygen batteries: new frontiers of sustainable energy storage

Abstract

Lithium sulfur and lithium oxygen batteries are predicted to be high-energy rechargeable systems of choice for emerging applications, such as modern electronics and electric vehicles. Despite the several issues hindering their diffusion, the two attractive systems are rapidly evolving, and achieving high performances and targets, which were only partially expected in the past few years. Lithium sulfur batteries have been recently introduced into the energy storage market, while practical prototypes of lithium oxygen cells are already emerging, thus indicating the high level achieved by these systems. Therefore, we report herein an overview of recent studies of the reaction mechanism which allowed the development of Li/S and Li/O₂ batteries. We show and discuss the latest advances, in terms of electrochemical performances and characteristics, in order to shed light on the feasibility of the two important, cheap and environmentally compatible energy storage systems.