TY - JOUR
T1 - Gel based sulfur cathodes with a high sulfur content and large mass loading for high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries
AU - Li, Shiqi
AU - Mou, Tong
AU - Ren, Guofeng
AU - Warzywoda, Juliusz
AU - Wei, Zidong
AU - Wang, Bin
AU - Fan, Zhaoyang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Royal Society of Chemistry.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - A significantly improved conductive matrix design for the sulfur electrode is essential to solve several problems related to sulfur electrochemistry toward the development of practical lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs). Great progress has been made by using a variety of carbon-based nanostructures for physically and chemically confining soluble polysulfides as well as providing conductive paths. However, most of these electrode designs have a low sulfur content or a low sulfur loading, leading to a low specific capacity or low areal capacity at the electrode level. Herein, intrinsically N- and O-doped carbon nanoribbon (CNR) aerogels, obtained by pyrolysis of bacterial cellulose (BC) aerogels, were employed to form gel-based sulfur cathodes, simultaneously achieving both a high sulfur content and a high sulfur loading. With a sulfur loading of 6.4 mg cm-2 and a sulfur content of 90% at the whole electrode (including the current collector) level, a capacity as high as 943 mA h g-1 was achieved, which corresponds to an areal capacity of 5.9 mA h cm-2. The outstanding cell performance is attributed to the gel based cathode structure, which can strongly hold a large amount of the catholyte and relieve the shuttle effect of lithium polysulfides.
AB - A significantly improved conductive matrix design for the sulfur electrode is essential to solve several problems related to sulfur electrochemistry toward the development of practical lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs). Great progress has been made by using a variety of carbon-based nanostructures for physically and chemically confining soluble polysulfides as well as providing conductive paths. However, most of these electrode designs have a low sulfur content or a low sulfur loading, leading to a low specific capacity or low areal capacity at the electrode level. Herein, intrinsically N- and O-doped carbon nanoribbon (CNR) aerogels, obtained by pyrolysis of bacterial cellulose (BC) aerogels, were employed to form gel-based sulfur cathodes, simultaneously achieving both a high sulfur content and a high sulfur loading. With a sulfur loading of 6.4 mg cm-2 and a sulfur content of 90% at the whole electrode (including the current collector) level, a capacity as high as 943 mA h g-1 was achieved, which corresponds to an areal capacity of 5.9 mA h cm-2. The outstanding cell performance is attributed to the gel based cathode structure, which can strongly hold a large amount of the catholyte and relieve the shuttle effect of lithium polysulfides.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85010378896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85010378896&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1039/c6ta09841j
DO - 10.1039/c6ta09841j
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85010378896
SN - 2050-7488
VL - 5
SP - 1650
EP - 1657
JO - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
JF - Journal of Materials Chemistry A
IS - 4
ER -