ssociate professor of chemistry and biochemistry, began this project in 2010 when the UA gave him funding to explore a new area of batteries.

Pyun said he didn’t want to work with lithium-ion batteries, which are the most common in portable electronic devices, because it would be hard to distinguish himself in that area.

Instead, Pyun turned to lithium-sulfur batteries, which have a lot of potential and one big drawback.

Pyun said lithium-sulfur batteries store five times more energy than ion batteries, but they don’t last nearly as long.

“Typical lithium-ion batteries can go through 500 to 1,000 charge-discharge-charge cycles,” he said. “For these lithium-sulfur batteries, you’re dead before even 100 cycles.”

Pyun and his team made it their goal to give lithium-sulfur batteries a much longer lifetime. The team then began studying the chemistry of sulfur.

Read the full story as it appeared in the Arizona Daily Star here.