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1. Taming polysulfides in sulfur-based batteries via electrolyte-soluble thiomolybdate additives

   https://doi.org/10.1039/D2TA03893E  

   Asl, Hooman Yaghoobnejad; Bhargav, Amruth; Manthiram, Arumugam (August 2022, Journal of Materials Chemistry A)

   The promise of secondary sulfur-based batteries as a sustainable and low-cost alternative to electrochemical energy storage has been long held back by the polysulfide shuttle problem. Herein, we demonstrate the utilization of electrolyte-soluble additives based on (oxo)thiomolybdate as a tool to mitigate the effect of the polysulfide shuttle in secondary sulfur-based batteries. Through a variety of techniques, it is shown that the Mo-containing anionic additives undergo spontaneous nucleophilic reactions with the highly soluble, long-chain polysulfides via a neutral S-atom transfer process, yielding higher S/Mo ratio complexes along with short-chain polysulfides. More importantly, it is shown how the O/S atomic substitution on the molybdenum center can induce enzymatic-level enhancement in the above reaction rate by lowering the homolytic S–S bond cleavage energy. Lastly, through anode-level inspections, it was realized that the dendritic electroplating of Li was suppressed considerably in the system with oxo/thiomolybdate, thereby reducing the cell impedance and overpotential, leading to significantly improved cycle-life. The positive influence of the increased polysulfide uptake reaction kinetics is evidenced by stable cycle-life and a low capacity-fade rate of 0.1% per cycle in Li–S cells with a high sulfur loading and lean electrolyte compositions. 

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2. On the Mechanism of the Inverse Vulcanization of Elemental Sulfur: Structural Characterization of Poly(sulfur- random -(1,3-diisopropenylbenzene))

   https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.3c03604  

   Bao, Jianhua; Martin, Kaitlyn P.; Cho, Eunkyung; Kang, Kyung-Seok; Glass, Richard S.; Coropceanu, Veaceslav; Bredas, Jean-Luc; Parker, Wallace O’Neil; Njardarson, Jon T.; Pyun, Jeffrey (June 2023, Journal of the American Chemical Society)
3. In-Operando FTIR Spectroscopy Study on Rapid Polysulfide Binding via Caffeine in Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.4c02789  

   Yim, Taber; Pereira, Rhyz; Nedsaengtip, Jantakan; Fafarman, Aaron_T; Kalra, Vibha (December 2024, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters)
4. Mesoscale Aggregation of Sulfur-Rich Asphaltenes: In Situ Microscopy and Coarse-Grained Molecular Simulation

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.langmuir.2c00323  

   Hammond, Christian B.; Aghaaminiha, Mohammadreza; Sharma, Sumit; Shen, Chongyang; Chen, Hao; Wu, Lei (July 2022, Langmuir)
5. Ultrafast Charge-Transfer Dynamics in the Iron–Sulfur Complex of Rhodobacter capsulatus Ferredoxin VI

   https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b02026  

   Mao, Ziliang; Carroll, Elizabeth C.; Kim, Peter W.; Cramer, Stephen P.; Larsen, Delmar S. (September 2017, The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters)