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Nitrogen-rich microporous carbon framework as an efficient polysulfide host for lithium-sulfur batteries

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Abstract

Lithium-sulfur batteries are recognized as a promising high-energy-density and low-cost energy storage devices. However, the sulfur cathode suffers from poor cycling stability resulting from the serious polysulfide shuttle. Herein, we develop a nitrogen-rich and highly porous carbon polyhedron for effectively hosting sulfur. The carbon host manifests an ultrahigh specific surface area of 3400 m2 g−1, a dominated micropore volume of 0.96 cm3 g−1, and a high-level nitrogen do** of 8.3 at.%. Such an intriguing structure could suppress the polysulfide shuttle via physical confinement by micropores and strong chemical adsorption by polar nitrogen species. Moreover, the electrically conductive carbon enables a substantially enhanced electrochemical kinetics. Consequently, the carbon/sulfur composite electrode delivers an ultralow fading rate of 0.033% per cycle at 2 C over 500 cycles and superior rate capability (483 mAh g−1 at a high 5 C rate). The present study demonstrates the potential use of nitrogen-rich porous carbon framework as an efficient polysulfide host for lithium-sulfur batteries.

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Acknowledgements

The work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51772249 and 51821091), Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (G2017KY0308 and 3102019JC005), Natural Science Foundation (2019JLM-26), Innovation Program for Talent (2019KJXX-066), and Post-doctoral Program of Shaanxi Province (2018BSHTDZZ16). The authors also thank the Analytical & Testing Center of Northwestern Polytechnical University for TEM analysis.

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing, Center for Nano Energy Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University and Shaanxi Joint Lab of Graphene (NPU), **’an, 710072, China

    **ngyuan Zhang, Hanyuan Zhou & Jian-Gan Wang

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  1. **ngyuan Zhang
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  2. Hanyuan Zhou
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Correspondence to Jian-Gan Wang.

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Zhang, X., Zhou, H. & Wang, JG. Nitrogen-rich microporous carbon framework as an efficient polysulfide host for lithium-sulfur batteries. J Mater Sci 56, 3364–3374 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-05433-5

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