Covalent Selenium Embedded in Hierarchical Carbon Nanofibers for Ultra-High Areal Capacity Li-Se Batteries

Jian Zhou; Maoxin Chen; Tao Wang; Shengyang Li; Qiusheng Zhang; Meng Zhang; Hanjiao Xu; Jialing Liu; Junfei Liang; Jian Zhu; Xiangfeng Duan

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2020.100919

Covalent Selenium Embedded in Hierarchical Carbon Nanofibers for Ultra-High Areal Capacity Li-Se Batteries

iScience. 2020 Mar 27;23(3):100919. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2020.100919. Epub 2020 Feb 17.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Hunan Key Laboratory of Two-Dimensional Materials, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, P. R. China.
² Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA; School of Energy and Power Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan, Shanxi 030051, P. R. China.
³ State Key Laboratory for Chemo/Biosensing and Chemometrics, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Hunan Key Laboratory of Two-Dimensional Materials, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, P. R. China. Electronic address: jzhu@hnu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

Abstract

Lithium selenium (Li-Se) batteries have attracted increasing interest for its high theoretical volumetric capacities up to 3,253 Ah L^-1. However, current studies are largely limited to electrodes with rather low mass loading and low areal capacity, resulting in low volumetric performance. Herein, we report a design of covalent selenium embedded in hierarchical nitrogen-doped carbon nanofibers (CSe@HNCNFs) for ultra-high areal capacity Li-Se batteries. The CSe@HNCNFs provide excellent ion and electron transport performance, whereas effectively retard polyselenides diffusion during cycling. We show that the Li-Se battery with mass loading of 1.87 mg cm^-2 displays a specific capacity of 762 mAh g^-1 after 2,500 cycles, with almost no capacity fading. Furthermore, by increasing the mass loading to 37.31 mg cm^-2, ultra-high areal capacities of 7.30 mAh cm^-2 is achieved, which greatly exceeds those reported previously for Li-Se batteries.

Keywords: Energy Storage; Materials Characterization Techniques; Nanostructure.