Recent progress and emerging application areas for lithium-sulfur battery technology

Electrification is progressing significantly within the present and future vehicle sectors such as large commercial vehicles (e. g. trucks and busses), high altitude long endurance (HALE), high altitude pseudo satellites (HAPS), and electric vertical take‐off and landing (eVTOL). The battery systems performance requirements differ across these applications in terms of power, cycle life, system cost, etc. However, the need for high gravimetric energy density, 400 Wh kg−1 and beyond, is common across them all, since it will enable vehicles to achieve extended range, longer mission duration, lighter weight or increased payload. The system level requirements of these emerging applications can be broken down into the component level developments required to integrate Li‐S technology as the power system of choice. In order to adapt the batteries’ properties, such as energy and power density, to the respective application, the academic research community has a key role to play in component level development. However, materials and component research must be conducted within the context of a viable Li‐S cell system. Herein, the key performance benefits, limitations, modelling and recent progress of the Li‐S battery technology and its adaption towards real world application are discussed