Realizing anti-self-discharged lithium-sulfur batteries by using hierarchical porous carbon nanofibers embedded with Fe/Ni-N catalytic sites

Tiantian Nie; Yuejin Zhu; Minxiang Fang; Lianbo Ma; Jie Xu; Yongjie Cao; Shuozhen Hu; Xinsheng Zhang; Dongfang Niu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.03.016

Realizing anti-self-discharged lithium-sulfur batteries by using hierarchical porous carbon nanofibers embedded with Fe/Ni-N catalytic sites

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Jun 15:640:908-916. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.03.016. Epub 2023 Mar 7.

Authors

Tiantian Nie¹, Yuejin Zhu¹, Minxiang Fang¹, Lianbo Ma², Jie Xu³, Yongjie Cao⁴, Shuozhen Hu¹, Xinsheng Zhang¹, Dongfang Niu⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, Maanshan 243002, China.
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, Maanshan 243002, China. Electronic address: xu_jie@ahut.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, Institute of New Energy, iChEM (Collaborative Innovation Center of Chemistry for Energy Materials), Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237, China. Electronic address: dfniu@ecust.edu.cn.

PMID: 36907150
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.03.016

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are featured with high gravimetric energy density, yet their commercial application is significantly deteriorated with the severe self-discharging resulted from the polysulfides shuttle and sluggish electrochemical kinetics. Here, a hierarchical porous carbon nanofibers implanted with Fe/Ni-N (denoted as Fe-Ni-HPCNF) catalytic sites are prepared and used as a kinetics booster toward anti-self-discharged Li-S batteries. In this design, the Fe-Ni-HPCNF possesses interconnected porous skeleton and abundant exposed active sites, enabling fast Li-ion conduction, excellent shuttle inhibition and catalytic ability for polysulfides' conversion. Combined with these advantages, this cell with the Fe-Ni-HPCNF equipped separator exhibits an ultralow self-discharged rate of 4.9% after resting for one week. Moreover, the modified batteries deliver a superior rate performance (783.3 mAh g^-1 at 4.0 C) and an outstanding cycling life (over 700 cycles with 0.057% attenuation rate at 1.0 C). This work may guide the advanced design of anti-self-discharged Li-S batteries.

Keywords: Anti-self-discharge; Fe/Ni-N; Lithium-sulfur batteries; Modified separator; Shuttle inhibition.