A graphene-like metallic cathode host for long-life and high-loading lithium–sulfur batteries

• Published in: Materials horizons Vol. 3; no. 2; pp. 130 - 136
• Main Authors: Pang, Quan, Kundu, Dipan, Nazar, Linda F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Carbon; Cathodes; Electrodes; Lithium; Lithium sulfur batteries; Nanostructure; Sulfur; Three dimensional
• ISSN: 2051-6347; 2051-6355
• DOI: 10.1039/C5MH00246J

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 Co 9 S 8 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.