Recent progress and remaining challenges in sulfur-based lithium secondary batteries – a review

This review is an attempt to report the latest development in lithium–sulfur batteries, namely the storage system that, due to its potential energy content, is presently attracting considerable attention both for automotive and stationary storage applications. We show here that consistent progress has been achieved, to the point that this battery is now considered to be near to industrial production. However, the performance of present lithium–sulfur batteries is still far from meeting their real energy density potentiality. Thus, the considerable breakthroughs so far achieved are outlined in this review as the basis for additional R&D, with related important results, which are expected to occur in the next few years.