A wide temperature solid-state Li-S battery enabled by a plasmon-enhanced copper-silicon nanowire photothermal current collector

Solid-sate lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), especially lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries, are one of the most promising candidates for developing high energy density and high safety energy storage devices. However, current solid-state Li-S batteries can only work well at a relatively high operating temperature (>50 degrees C) due to the poor Li-ion transfer kinetics at electrodes/electrolyte and their interfaces which make these batteries lose most of their capacity and power as the temperature falls below room temperature. Here, we report an extra-wide operating temperature solid-state Li-S battery that can efficiently harvest omnidirectional solar energy and convert it into heat via a hierarchical copper-silicon nanowire photothermal current collector. Such a current collector enables broad solar spectrum absorption (>93%) with a wide incident angle (0 degree to 70 degree) and efficient conversion of light-to-heat, improving charge storage and transmission at electrodes/electrolyte and their interfaces even at low operating temperatures. As a result, the battery demonstrates low impedance (similar to 10(2) omega cm(2)), a high discharge capacity of similar to 900 mA h g(-1) at room temperature, similar to 960 mA h g(-1) at 60 degrees C and a discharge capacity of similar to 260 mA h g(-1) at -60 degrees C. Such a design provides an effective solution for all-solid-state LIBs operating at a low temperature.