Study on electrochemical performance of WS2 cathode material for thermal battery prepared by one-step synthesis

Traditional cathode materials can no longer meet the development needs of thermal batteries, and the research of new cathode materials is imminent. In this study, WS 2 was successfully prepared by a simple one-step synthesis method. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) showed that it has good electrical conductivity, its bandgap had been calculated by ultraviolet–visible diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (UV-visDRS), and its thermal decomposition temperature exceeded 1000  °C by thermogravimetric (TG) analysis. Due to the high decomposition temperature and high electronic conductivity of WS 2 , LiBr–LiCl–LiF electrolyte with high ionic conductivity but the high melting point was selected. The structure and composition of WS 2 and LiBr–LiCl–LiF after reaction at high temperature (500 °C) were studied, and WS 2 was found to have good compatibility with ternary lithium electrolyte. Assembling Li–B/LiBr–LiCl–LiF/WS 2 single thermal battery, the discharge specific capacity is 952As g −1 at 300 mA cm −2 and cutoff voltage of 0.97 V. And the internal resistance of the single thermal battery is 11.87 mΩ under the super large pulse current density of 5A cm −2 . This further advances the application of WS 2 in thermal batteries.