Using sp2 N atom anchoring effect to prepare ultrafine vanadium nitride particles on porous nitrogen-doped carbon as cathode for lithium-sulfur battery

Chaoyang Sun; Shan Ji; Xianguo Ma; Hui Wang; Xuyun Wang; Vladimir Linkov; Rongfang Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2022.05.053

Using sp² N atom anchoring effect to prepare ultrafine vanadium nitride particles on porous nitrogen-doped carbon as cathode for lithium-sulfur battery

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Oct:623:306-317. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.05.053. Epub 2022 May 13.

Authors

Chaoyang Sun¹, Shan Ji², Xianguo Ma³, Hui Wang⁴, Xuyun Wang⁵, Vladimir Linkov⁶, Rongfang Wang⁷

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory Base for Eco-Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266042, China.
² College of Biological, Chemical Science and Engineering, Jiaxing University, Jiaxing 314001, China. Electronic address: shan.ji@ucl.ac.uk.
³ School of Chemical Engineering, Guizhou Institute of Technology, Guiyang 550003, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory Base for Eco-Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266042, China. Electronic address: wangh@qust.edu.cn.
⁵ State Key Laboratory Base for Eco-Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266042, China. Electronic address: wangxy@qust.edu.cn.
⁶ South African Institute for Advanced Materials Chemistry, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town 7535, South Africa. Electronic address: vlinkov@uwc.ac.za.
⁷ State Key Laboratory Base for Eco-Chemical Engineering, College of Chemical Engineering, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266042, China. Electronic address: rfwang@qust.edu.cn.

PMID: 35594589
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2022.05.053

Abstract

Porous carbon-supported transition metals and their compounds have attracted much attention as sulfur host materials for cathodes of lithium-sulfur batteries, due to their high chemisorption capacity and ability to catalyze the conversion of polysulfides. However, actual activity of these materials is not very high because of low specific surface areas of transition metal compounds synthesized at high temperatures. In this study, ultra-fine vanadium nitride particles with an average particle size of ca. 4 nm (VN/M/NC) are successfully grown on the surface of nitrogen-doped three-dimensional carbon using sp² nitrogen atoms, resulting from melamine pyrolysis in the presence of ammonium metavanadate, as anchor points to lock vanadium atoms in the VN/M/NC material. When used as a cathode for lithium-sulfur battery, VN/M/NC demonstrates initial discharge specific capacity of 1080 mAh g^-1 at 0.2 C, and retains a discharge capacity of 475 mAh g^-1 at a high rate of 2 C. With capacity attenuation of only 0.037% per cycle after 500 cycles at 1 C, the newly obtained VN/M/NC can be a promising cathode material for lithium-sulfur batteries.

Keywords: 3D carbon; Cathode; Lithium-sulfur battery; Sp(2) N; Vanadium nitride.