• DOI:10.1038/nchem.1624
• Corpus ID: 1944535

The use of elemental sulfur as an alternative feedstock for polymeric materials.

@article{Chung2013TheUO,
  title={The use of elemental sulfur as an alternative feedstock for polymeric materials.},
  author={Woo Jin Chung and Jared J. Griebel and Eui-Tae Kim and Hyunsik Yoon and Adam G. Simmonds and Hyun Jun Ji and Philip T. Dirlam and Richard S. Glass and Jeong Jae Wie and Ngoc A. Nguyen and Brett Guralnick and Jungjin Park and {\'A}rpad́ Somogyi and Patrick Th{\'e}ato and Michael E. Mackay and Yung‐Eun Sung and Kookheon Char and Jeffrey Pyun},
  journal={Nature chemistry},
  year={2013},
  volume={5 6},
  pages={
          518-24
        }
}

• W. Chung, Jared J. Griebel, +15 authors J. Pyun
• Published 1 June 2013
• Materials Science, Chemistry
• Nature chemistry

An excess of elemental sulfur is generated annually from hydrodesulfurization in petroleum refining processes; however, it has a limited number of uses, of which one example is the production of sulfuric acid. Despite this excess, the development of synthetic and processing methods to convert elemental sulfur into useful chemical substances has not been investigated widely. Here we report a facile method (termed 'inverse vulcanization') to prepare chemically stable and processable polymeric materials through the direct copolymerization of elemental sulfur with vinylic monomers. This methodology enabled the modification of sulfur into processable copolymer forms with tunable thermomechanical properties, which leads to well-defined sulfur-rich micropatterned films created by imprint lithography. We also demonstrate that these copolymers exhibit comparable electrochemical properties to elemental sulfur and could serve as the active material in Li-S batteries, exhibiting high specific capacity (823 mA h g(-1) at 100 cycles) and enhanced capacity retention.