A polysulfide/ferricyanide redox flow battery with extended cycling

Abstract

The inexpensive sulfur raw material is promising to enable cost-effective redox flow batteries for long duration energy storage. But the catastrophic through-membrane crossover of polysulfides remains a severe challenge resulting in irreversible performance degradation and short cycle life. In this work, we demonstrate that use of a permselective cation exchange membrane yields a two orders of magnitude enhancement in polysulfide retention compared to the benchmark Nafion membrane. Combined physico-chemical, spectroscopic, and microscopic analyses suggest more disordered sidechain structures, which lead to the more hydrophobic nature and smaller hydrophilic domains in the membrane. The microstructural features contribute to the effective mitigation of polysulfide crossover. As a result, the cycle life of polysulfide/ferricyanide flow cells is boosted over a substantially extended test time. This finding sheds light on the fundamental membrane factors that cause polysulfide permeation and can provide feasible directions in the development of permselective membranes for polysulfide flow batteries.

Graphical abstract: A polysulfide/ferricyanide redox flow battery with extended cycling

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
03 Jul 2025
Accepted
20 Jul 2025
First published
23 Jul 2025
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

J. Mater. Chem. A, 2025, Advance Article

A polysulfide/ferricyanide redox flow battery with extended cycling

M. Sarfaraz Khabbaz, A. Thakur, D. Maity, S. Biabanialitappeh, B. Mortha, J. P. McKay, G. Parada, M. Agarwal, H. Zhang, X. Zhang, J. D. Bazak and X. Wei, J. Mater. Chem. A, 2025, Advance Article , DOI: 10.1039/D5TA05404D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements