General and Scalable Fabrication of Core-Shell Metal Sulfides@C Anchored on 3D N-Doped Foam toward Flexible Sodium Ion Batteries

Xiangdong Ma; Xunhui Xiong; Pinjuan Zou; Weizhen Liu; Fei Wang; Longwei Liang; Yong Liu; Changzhou Yuan; Zhang Lin

doi:10.1002/smll.201903259

General and Scalable Fabrication of Core-Shell Metal Sulfides@C Anchored on 3D N-Doped Foam toward Flexible Sodium Ion Batteries

Small. 2019 Nov;15(45):e1903259. doi: 10.1002/smll.201903259. Epub 2019 Sep 26.

Authors

Xiangdong Ma¹, Xunhui Xiong¹, Pinjuan Zou¹, Weizhen Liu¹, Fei Wang², Longwei Liang³, Yong Liu², Changzhou Yuan³, Zhang Lin¹

Affiliations

¹ Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Surface Chemistry of Energy Materials, New Energy Research Institute, School of Environment and Energy, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, P. R. China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, 471023, P. R. China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, P. R. China.

PMID: 31559695
DOI: 10.1002/smll.201903259

Abstract

Flexible self-standing transitional metal sulfides (TMSs)/carbon nanoarchitectures have attracted widespread research interests for sodium ion batteries (SIBs), thanks to their enormous capability to address intrinsic issues of TMSs for SIBs applications. However, controllable synthesis of hierarchical hybrid structures is always laborious and involves complicated procedures. Herein, a simple yet general and scalable adsorption-annealing strategy is first devised to finely construct core-shell carbon-coated TMSs (TMSs@C, including Co₉ S₈ @C, FeS@C, Ni₃ S₂ @C, MnS@C, and ZnS@C) nanoparticles anchored on 3D N-doped carbon foam (3DNCF) via the coordination and hydrogen-bond adsorption. Benefiting from synergistic contributions from strong chemical affinity between nanodimensional TMSs and 3DNCF, efficient electronic/ionic transport channels, as well as a uniform carbon accommodating layer, the resulted self-standing TMSs@C/3DNCF electrodes exhibit distinguished sodium storage performances, including large reversible capacities, high rate behaviors, and exceptional long-span cycle stability in both half cells and flexible full devices. More significantly, the smart methodology developed holds huge promise for commercialization of binder-free TMSs@C/3DNCF anodes toward advanced flexible SIBs.

Keywords: N-doped carbon foam; adsorption-annealing strategy; flexible sodium ion batteries; metal sulfides@C; self-standing anodes.

Abstract

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