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Dual confinement of polysulfides in boron-doped porous carbon sphere/graphene hybrid for advanced Li-S batteries

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Abstract

A hybrid structure consisting of boron-doped porous carbon spheres and graphene (BPCS-G) has been designed and synthesized toward solving the polysulfide-shuttle problem, which is the most critical issue of current Li-S batteries. The proposed hybrid structure showing high surface area (870 m2·g−1) and high B-dopant content (6.51 wt.%) simultaneously offers both physical confinement and chemical absorption of polysulfides. On one hand, the abundant-pore structure ensures high sulfur loading, facilitates fast charge transfer, and restrains polysulfide migration during cycling. On the other hand, our density functional theory calculations demonstrate that the B dopant is capable of chemically binding polysulfides. As a consequence of such dual polysulfide confinement, the BPCS-G/S cathode prepared with 70 wt.% sulfur loading presents a high reversible capacity of 1,174 mAh·g−1 at 0.02 C, a high rate capacity of 396 mAh·g−1 at 5 C, and good cyclability over 500 cycles with only 0.05% capacity decay per cycle. The present work provides an efficient and cost-effective platform for the scalable synthesis of high-performance carbon-based materials for advanced Li-S batteries.

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Acknowledgments

T. Y. acknowledges the supports by MOE Tier 1 (Nos. RG100/15, RG178/15 and RG22/16). W. H. thanks the supports by the National Basic Research Program of China-Fundamental Studies of Perovskite Solar Cells (No. 2015CB932200), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (No. BM2012010), Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (No. YX03001), Ministry of Education of China (No. IRT1148), Synergetic Innovation Center for Organic Electronics and Information Displays, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 61136003 and 51173081). J. W. L. thanks the supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21603104). J. F. Z. thanks the supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21502091), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (Nos. BK20130912 and 14KJB430017).

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  1. Wei Ai and Jiewei Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Flexible Electronics (KLOFE) & Institute of Advanced Materials (IAM), Jiangsu National Synergetic Innovation Center for Advanced Materials (SICAM), Nanjing Tech University (NanjingTech), 30 South Puzhu Road, Nanjing, 211816, China

    Wei Ai, Jiewei Li, Zhuzhu Du, Jianfeng Zhao & Wei Huang

  2. Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 637371, Singapore

    Wei Ai, Chenji Zou, Hongfang Du, Xin Xu, Yu Chen, Hongbo Zhang & Ting Yu

  3. Shaanxi Institute of Flexible Electronics (SIFE), Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), 127 West Youyi Road, Xi’an, 710072, China

    Wei Huang

  4. Institute for Clean Energy & Advanced Materials, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Hongfang Du & Changming Li

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  1. Wei Ai
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Correspondence to Wei Huang or Ting Yu.

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Ai, W., Li, J., Du, Z. et al. Dual confinement of polysulfides in boron-doped porous carbon sphere/graphene hybrid for advanced Li-S batteries. Nano Res. 11, 4562–4573 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2036-6

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