Room-temperature (RT) sodium-sulfur batteries hold great promise for the development of efficient, low-cost, and environmentally friendly energy storage systems. Nevertheless, the dissolution of long-chain polysulfides is a huge obstacle. In this work, a composite cathode which integrates Ni/Co bimetal nanoparticles as the catalyst and carbon spheres with abundant channels as the host is prepared for RT Na-S batteries. Moreover, a valuable strategy to reduce the dissolution of polysulfides by accurately regulating the two-step reaction kinetics of polysulfide transformation (from Na2S to long-chain polysulfides and then from polysulfides to sulfur) is presented. Through adjusting the ratio of Ni and Co, the optimal cathode with a Ni/Co ratio of 1:2 can retard the first conversion of Na2S to polysulfides and simultaneously accelerate the subsequent transformation of polysulfides to sulfur. In this case, the soluble polysulfides can immediately transform to solid sulfur as soon as it appears, thus avoiding the shuttle of polysulfides. The galvanostatic intermittent titration method and in situ Raman are employed to supervise the transformation of polysulfides during the discharge/charge process. As a result, the composite shows excellent performance as the cathode of RT liquid/quasi-solid-state Na-S batteries in terms of specific capacities, rate capability, and cycle stability.
Keywords: bimetallic catalyst; multi-step catalysis; polysulfides; reaction kinetics; sodium−sulfur batteries.