Investigation of the Spontaneous Interaction of Carbon and Sulphur

The starting point of this project are observations concerning a laboratory curiosity which the applicants have published together under the term “sulfur spillover” (doi: 10.1002/anie.201807295). When porous carbon and sulfur are brought into contact at room temperature, the sulfur loses characteristics like melting point, Raman vibrations and crystallinity within a few hours to days without any further influence. This project aims to fathom out this phenomenon. To this end, the applicants will investigate fundamental thermodynamic and kinetic properties of the sulfur spillover using various methods. Owing to the complementary orientation of the work groups, the focus is particularly on the basic structure determination and the electrochemistry of the resulting materials. With a view to potential applications, it is to be examined whether the spillover process can be utilised for the preparation of solid state metal/sulfur batteries.