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Efficient polysulfide anchor: brain coral-like WS2 nanosheets

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Abstract

Controlling the inherent polysulfide shuttle process has been the key research topic to solve the irreversible capacity loss problem of Li–S battery. By skillfully designing, hierarchical brain coral-like WS2 nanosheets are synthesized. The novel structure is consisted of WS2 nanosheets arrayed along the same crystal plane, which expose a large number of adsorption active sites and enhance the adsorption of polysulfides. At the same time, the multilayer sheet structure has a large specific surface area and increases the sulfur loading. The brain coral-like WS2/S cathode exhibits excellent electrochemical properties, which delivers an initial discharge specific capacity of 1308 mAh g−1 at 0.1 C. And when cycles at 2 C, the discharge specific capacity is maintained at 721 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles, together with a low decay of 0.06% per cycle.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the Hubei Provincial Department of Science and Technology (Grant No. 2018CFB103), Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0200200) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51673060, 11574075).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hubei Collaborative Innovation Center for Advanced Organic Chemical Materials, Ministry-of-Education Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials (Hubei University), School of Materials Science and Engineering, HubeiUniversity, Wuhan, 430062, People’s Republic of China

    Man Xiong, Jingwen Qian, Kai Yang, Zihe Chen, Tao Mei, Jianying Wang, Jinhua Li, Li Yu & Xianbao Wang

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  1. Man Xiong
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  2. Jingwen Qian
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  3. Kai Yang
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Correspondence to Jingwen Qian or Xianbao Wang.

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Xiong, M., Qian, J., Yang, K. et al. Efficient polysulfide anchor: brain coral-like WS2 nanosheets. J Mater Sci 55, 12031–12040 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-04760-x

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