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Preparation and properties of Sn composite C-coated Li4Ti5O12 materials for lithium–sulfur battery anodes

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Abstract

Li4Ti5O12 (LTO) is a very prospective anode material for lithium–sulfur batteries (LSBs) due to its ability to effectively suppress the “shuttle effect” of polysulfides in the sulfur cathode and inhibits the growth of lithium dendrites. Unfortunately, the low electronic conductivity of LTO results in low Coulombic efficiency and cycling rate. In this work, three metal Sn composite LTO and introduced doped carbon LTO/Sn/C-x (x = 20, 40, and 60) encapsulate as the anode material for LSBs were employed by high-temperature solid-phase method and the structure, morphology, and electrochemical properties of LTO/Sn/C-x have been investigated. The results demonstrate that electronic conductivity, lithium-ion diffusion rate, discharge specific capacity, discharge rate capability, and stability of LTO/Sn/C-x electrodes are significantly improved. Among them, LTO/Sn/C-20 electrode exhibits the highest initial discharge specific capacity (339.54 mAh g−1) at 0.1 C, which is 1.2-fold of LTO/C (291.56 mAh g−1), and the initial discharge capacity from 224.96 mAh g−1 to 197.39 mAh g−1 after 150 cycles, corresponds to 87.7% of the initial stable discharge capacity. The outstanding performance of LTO/Sn/C-20 can be attributed to the low interface impedance and higher electronic conductivity, and appropriate amount of metal Sn composite can improve the electrochemical activity. Moreover, the carbon layer on the material surface was proven to reduce the disadvantage of volume expansion of Sn during charge–discharge processes. This work demonstrates that composite metal Sn is an effective method to improve LTO multiplication performance, providing valuable insights into the design and optimization of anode electrode materials for Li-S batteries.

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Funding

This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 52070070), Foundation of National Key Scientific Instruments and the Project of Science & Technology Office of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. KB20181043), and Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Microelectronics and Control Engineering, Changzhou University, Changzhou, 213164, People’s Republic of China

    Zuming He, Long Shen, Kai Lin, Jiangbin Su & Longlong Chen

  2. Huaide School, Changzhou University, Jingjiang, 214500, People’s Republic of China

    Zhengyi Huang

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  1. Zuming He
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  2. Long Shen
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  3. Kai Lin
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  4. Jiangbin Su
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Contributions

ZH contributed toward formal analysis, investigation, writing—original draft, writing—review & editing, data collection, and validation. LS contributed toward formal analysis and editing. KL contributed toward formal analysis. JS contributed toward formal analysis. LC contributed toward formal analysis. ZH contributed toward formal analysis.

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Correspondence to Zuming He.

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He, Z., Shen, L., Lin, K. et al. Preparation and properties of Sn composite C-coated Li4Ti5O12 materials for lithium–sulfur battery anodes. J Mater Sci: Mater Electron 35, 60 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-023-11813-9

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