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ZnS nanolayer coated hollow carbon spheres with enhanced rate and cycling performance for Li-S batteries

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Abstract

Conductive carbon structure has been considered as a promising sulfur-hosting material as the cathode of lithium-sulfur batteries. However, the issue of polysulfide shuttling requires an additional component to help restrict and convert sulfur substances. Herein, in this work, hollow and porous carbon nanospheres (HCS) are synthesized by a template method and a high-temperature carbonization treatment. A thin layer of ZnS coating is then deposited on the HCS-based sulfur (ZnS@HCS/S) cathode with controlled thickness, and the overall electrochemical properties are systematically evaluated. Results show that with 30 nm-thick ZnS coating, the cathode reveals an improved capacity of 1411 mA h g−1, and higher capacities from 0.2 to 3 C rate compared with bare HCS/S cathode. Moreover, the ZnS coating also enhances the cycling stability of ZnS@HCS/S cathode over 280 cycles at 0.5 C, with only 0.2% capacity decay per cycle. This work demonstrates potential applications for high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Engineering Research Centre of High-Performance Copper Alloy Materials and Processing, Ministry of Education, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    FanCheng Meng, Bin Xu, Tao Long & JieHua Liu

  2. Division of Nanomaterials and Jiangxi Key Lab of Carbonene Materials, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Nanchang, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanchang, 330200, China

    FanCheng Meng & YongYi Zhang

  3. Instrumental Analysis Centre, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Sheng Cheng

  4. School of Instrument Science and Opto-electronics Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Yong Li

  5. Key Laboratory of Multifunctional Nanomaterials and Smart Systems, Advanced Materials Division, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215123, China

    YongYi Zhang

  6. School of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    YongYi Zhang

Authors
  1. FanCheng Meng
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  2. Bin Xu
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  3. Tao Long
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  4. Sheng Cheng
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  5. Yong Li
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  6. YongYi Zhang
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  7. JieHua Liu
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to FanCheng Meng or JieHua Liu.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0203301), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province and Anhui Province (Grant Nos. 20202BAB204007 & 1808085QE140), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. U1832136 & 21303038), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. PA2021GDGP0059).

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The supporting information is available online at tech.scichina.com and link.springer.com. The supporting materials are published as submitted, without typesetting or editing. The responsibility for scientific accuracy and content remains entirely with the authors.

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Meng, F., Xu, B., Long, T. et al. ZnS nanolayer coated hollow carbon spheres with enhanced rate and cycling performance for Li-S batteries. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 65, 272–281 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-1925-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-021-1925-2

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