Three-Dimensional Hierarchical Porous Structure of PPy/Porous-Graphene to Encapsulate Polysulfides for Lithium/Sulfur Batteries

Yongguang Zhang; Zhumabay Bakenov; Taizhe Tan; Jin Huang

doi:10.3390/nano8080606

Three-Dimensional Hierarchical Porous Structure of PPy/Porous-Graphene to Encapsulate Polysulfides for Lithium/Sulfur Batteries

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2018 Aug 9;8(8):606. doi: 10.3390/nano8080606.

Authors

Yongguang Zhang¹, Zhumabay Bakenov², Taizhe Tan³, Jin Huang⁴

Affiliations

¹ School of Materials and Energy, Synergy Innovation Institute of GDUT (Heyuan), Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. ygzhang126@126.com.
² Institute of Batteries LLC, National Laboratory Astana, School of Engineering, Nazarbayev University, 53 Kabanbay Batyr Avenue, Astana 010000, Kazakhstan. zbakenov@nu.edu.kz.
³ School of Materials and Energy, Synergy Innovation Institute of GDUT (Heyuan), Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. tztansii18@163.com.
⁴ School of Materials and Energy, Synergy Innovation Institute of GDUT (Heyuan), Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. huangjiner@126.com.

Abstract

Herein, we demonstrate the fabrication of a three-dimensional (3D) polypyrrole-coated-porous graphene (PPy/PG) composite through in-situ polymerization of pyrrole monomer on PG surface. The PPy/PG displays a 3D hierarchical porous structure and the resulting PPy/PG hybrid serves as a conductive trap to lithium polysulfides enhancing the electrochemical performances. Owing to the superior conductivity and peculiar structure, a high initial discharge capacity of 1020 mAh g^-1 and the reversible capacity of 802 mAh g^-1 over 200 cycles are obtained for the S/PPy/PG cathode at 0.1 C, remaining the remarkable cyclic stability. In addition, the S/PPy/PG cathodes demonstrate an excellent rate performance exhibiting 477 mAh g^-1 at 2 C.

Keywords: hierarchical 3D porous structure; lithium/sulfur battery; sulfur/polypyrrole/porous graphene composite.