Date of Award

8-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Physics and Astronomy

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Ramakrishna Podila

Committee Member

Dr. Joan Marler

Committee Member

Dr. Sumanta Tewari

Abstract

With the invention of the Lithium-Ion cell in the latter half of the 20th century, there has been a continued endeavor for innovation in compact energy-storage. Combined with the ever-growing need to move away from fossil fuels, electrochemical energy storage has seen a myriad of research projects in the pursuit of finding the ‘beyond-lithium’ cell. One of these projects that I personally assisted with was lithium-sulfur cells, which allow for a significantly greater energy storage capacity when compared to lithium-ion cells. In investigating a popular cathode in lithium-sulfur cells, sulfurized polyacrylonitrile (SPAN), it was hinted that there may be more mechanics at play in sulfurizing polymers for their use in batteries. After our initial research, it was suggested that nitrogen may play a significant role in improving the total capacity of lithium-sulfur cells, and the end of my work has been to test that theory. I developed processes to sulfurize nylon-6 and polystyrene, using a process similar to SPAN, in order to test the theory. With both being similarly-simple polymers, one with nitrogen and the other without, the idea was to test if the nitrogen in nylon produced a significant difference between the two polymer’s performance when utilized in lithium-sulfur cells. After testing the cells in charge-discharge cycling and cyclic voltammetry, it was seen that both cells perform significantly worse than other sulfurized polymers. While this can be seen negatively, it provides further insight and offers a counterexample to SPAN in what makes sulfurized polymers work within lithium-sulfur cells.

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