ZnS-Decorated CNTs as Backbone with Polyaniline Coating Layer to Boost the Performance Lithium-Sulfur Batteries
ZHOU Yuxiang1, SHI Tianyu1, ZHAO Chenyuan1, YIN Haihong1,*, SONG Changqing1, YU Ke2
1 School of Information Science and Technology, Nantong University, Nantong 226019, Jiangsu, China 2 Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
Abstract: Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) have attracted increasing attention due to their excellent specific capacity and energy density. However, obstructions of polysulfide dissolution, the volume expansion, and the poor conductivity usually result in a significant capacity decrease and sluggish reaction kinetics during cycling. Herein, we fabricated a novel ZnS-CNTs/S@PANI cathode to suppress the aforementioned obstacles, in which the ZnS-decorated CNTs were used as backbone to support sulfur and a polyaniline (PANI) layer was then coated on them. The conductive CNT network permitted fast electron/ion transfer and meanwhile accommodated the volume expansion. The decorated ZnS quantum dots (QDs) provided abundant polar sites on CNT surface facilitating the chemisorption of polysulfides. The conductive PANI coating layer acted multiple roles as a conducting additive, an adsorbing agent, and a physical barrier, which inhibited the shuttle of polysulfides and bettered the kinetics. Therefore, the obtained ZnS-CNTs/S@PANI cathode provided a high reversible capacity of 952.33 mAh·g-1 at 0.5 C, and still maintained an excellent capacity of 776.37 mAh·g-1 even after 150 cycles. The same excellent rate performance of 633.62 mAh·g-1 was also obtained at 2 C. Therefore, this study provides a simple and low-cost method for the preparation of high-performance Li-S battery cathode materials.
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