Ammonia-free fabrication of ultrafine vanadium nitride nanoparticles as interfacial mediators for promoting electrochemical behaviors of lithium-sulfur batteries

Xueping Meng; Zhonglin Li; Zhibin Cheng; Pengyue Li; Ruihu Wang; Xiaoju Li

doi:10.1039/d1nr00176k

Ammonia-free fabrication of ultrafine vanadium nitride nanoparticles as interfacial mediators for promoting electrochemical behaviors of lithium-sulfur batteries

Nanoscale. 2021 Mar 18;13(10):5292-5299. doi: 10.1039/d1nr00176k.

Authors

Xueping Meng¹, Zhonglin Li², Zhibin Cheng³, Pengyue Li⁴, Ruihu Wang², Xiaoju Li⁴

Affiliations

¹ Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350007, China. xiaojuli@fjnu.edu.cn and State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian 350002, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian 350002, China and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Chemical Process Safety, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China.
³ Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350007, China. xiaojuli@fjnu.edu.cn.
⁴ Fujian Provincial Key Laboratory of Polymer Materials, College of Chemistry and Materials Science, Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, Fujian 350007, China. xiaojuli@fjnu.edu.cn and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Chemical Process Safety, School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin 300130, China.

PMID: 33660724
DOI: 10.1039/d1nr00176k

Abstract

Transition metal nitrides are promising mediators for improving the electrochemical performance of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries, but the synthesis of ultrafine and durable nanoparticles in the absence of ammonia gas is still a great challenge. Herein, we reported a new method for the fabrication of ultrafine vanadium nitride (VN) nanoparticles uniformly embedded into N-doped porous carbon using a main-chain imidazolium-based ionic polymer (ImIP) containing metavanadate anions as a precursor. ImIP not only serves as sole carbon and nitrogen sources, but also effectively inhibits the aggregation and coalescence of VN nanoparticles during pyrolysis. Benefiting from the ultrafine particle size, high polarity and good electrocatalytic effects of VN, both redox kinetics of sulfur species and chemical adsorbability toward polysulfides are greatly expedited. The resultant electrode exhibits superior cycling stability with a low average capacity decay rate of 0.035% for 1200 cycles at a high rate of 5 C. This work develops a facile ammonia-free approach to fabricate ultrafine VN nanoparticles for improving electrochemical behaviors of Li-S batteries.