Evolution of the sulfur strand length distribution in lithium organo-sulfur batteries monitored through operando X-ray absorption spectrometry

Recently, it has been shown that the sulfur load and subsequently the sulfur strand length of organo-sulfur networks prepared via inverse vulcanization for lithium organo-sulfur batteries impact the battery performance in terms of specific capacity and stability. In this work, we quantify the distribution of sulfur strand lengths evolving over the course of several charge–discharge cycles using operando X-ray absorption spectrometry. The results correlate the stability of sulfur strand length and (ir)reversibility of S-strand reduction and accompanied cleavage with battery cycling.