A graphene-like metallic cathode host for long-life and high-loading lithium–sulfur batteries. Issue 2 (16th December 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Pang, Quan; Kundu, Dipan; Nazar, Linda F.
• Is Part Of: Materials horizons. Volume 3:Issue 2(2016:Mar.)
• Page Start: 130
• Page End: 136
• Publication Date: 2015-12-16
• Subjects: Materials -- Research -- Periodicals; 543.0284
• DOI: 10.1039/c5mh00246j
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2051-6347

Abstract

Abstract : Nanostructured sulfur host materials that embrace both high electronic conductivity and strong chemisorption towards polysulfides are central to enable high performance Li–S batteries. Abstract : Development of Li–S batteries with long cycle life and high practical capacity is central to enable low-cost, large-scale energy storage. Sulfiphilic cathode materials with strong affinity for lithium (poly)sulfides are a promising new group of candidates to control dissolution/precipitation reactions in the cell, where the improvement of conductivity and the areal sulfur loading is an important objective. Here we report a metallic Co9 S8 material with an interconnected graphene-like nano-architecture that realizes this aim. First-principles calculations coupled with spectroscopic evidence demonstrate the synergistic strong dual-interactions of polysulfides with the host. The three dimensional interconnected structure with hierarchical porosity not only manifests up to a factor of 10 increase of cycling stability (fade < 0.045% per cycle over 1500 cycles at C/2) compared to standard porous carbons but also, more importantly, enables a high-loading sulfur electrode with up to 75 wt% sulfur, and up to 4.5 mg cm −2 areal sulfur loading.