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A high-volumetric-capacity cathode based on interconnected close-packed N-doped porous carbon nanospheres for long-life lithium–sulfur batteries

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journal contribution
posted on 2017-08-31, 16:00 authored by Cheng Hu, Caroline Kirk, Qiong Cai, Carlos Cuadrado-Collados, Joaquin Silvestre-Albero, Francisco Rodriguez-Reinoso, Mark Biggs
This study reports a Li–S battery cathode of high volumetric capacity enabled by novel micro- and mesostructuring. The cathode is based on monodis-perse highly porous carbon nanospheres derived from a facile template- and surfactant-free method. At the mesoscale, the nanospheres structure into interconnected close-packed clusters of a few microns in extent, thus facili-tating the fabrication of dense crack-free high areal sulfur loading (5 mg cm−2) cathodes with high electrical conductivity and low cathode impedance. A combination of the nitrogen doping (5 wt%), high porosity (2.3 cm3 g−1), and surface area (2900 m2 g−1) at the microscale enables high sulfur immobiliza-tion and utilization. The cathode delivers among the best reported volumetric capacity to date, above typical Li-ion areal capacity at 0.2 C over 200 cycles and low capacity fading of 0.1% per cycle at 0.5 C over 500 cycles. The compact cathode structure also ensures a low electrolyte requirement (6 µL mg−1), which aids a low overall cell weight, and further, among the best gravimetric capacities published to date as well.

Funding

Q.C. gratefully acknowledges the support by the EPSRC program EP/M027066/1.

History

School

  • Science

Department

  • Chemistry

Published in

Advanced Energy Materials

Volume

7

Issue

22

Citation

HU, C. ... et al, 2017. A high-volumetric-capacity cathode based on interconnected close-packed N-doped porous carbon nanospheres for long-life lithium–sulfur batteries. Advanced Energy Materials, 7(22): paper 1701082.

Publisher

© Wiley

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2017-07-10

Publication date

2017-08-21

Notes

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: HU, C. ... et al, 2017. A high-volumetric-capacity cathode based on interconnected close-packed N-doped porous carbon nanospheres for long-life lithium–sulfur batteries. Advanced Energy Materials, 7(22): paper 1701082., which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/aenm.201701082. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions

ISSN

1614-6832

eISSN

1614-6840

Language

  • en

Article number

1701082