InOOH as an efficient bidirectional catalyst for accelerated polysulfides conversion to enable high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries

Tongkun Zhao; Junwu Chen; Kaiqing Dai; Menglei Yuan; Jingxian Zhang; Shuwei Li; Zhanjun Liu; Hongyan He; Chao Yang; Guangjin Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2021.12.063

InOOH as an efficient bidirectional catalyst for accelerated polysulfides conversion to enable high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Mar 15:610:418-426. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.12.063. Epub 2021 Dec 11.

Authors

Tongkun Zhao¹, Junwu Chen², Kaiqing Dai³, Menglei Yuan¹, Jingxian Zhang¹, Shuwei Li², Zhanjun Liu⁴, Hongyan He², Chao Yang⁵, Guangjin Zhang⁶

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
² CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
³ School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan 030001, China.
⁵ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Shantou 515031, China.
⁶ CAS Key Laboratory of Green Process and Engineering, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, School of Chemical Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Guangdong Laboratory, Shantou 515031, China. Electronic address: zhanggj@ipe.ac.cn.

PMID: 34929512
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.12.063

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries with the prominent advantages are greatly expected to be the attractive alternatives in the next-generation energy-storage systems. However, the practical success of Li-S batteries suffers from the shuttle effect and depressed redox kinetics of polysulfides. Herein, for the first time, InOOH nanoparticles are employed as a potent catalytic additive in sulfur electrode to overcome these issues. As demonstrated by the theoretical and experimental results, the strong interactions between the InOOH nanoparticles and sulfur species enable the effective adsorption of polysulfides. More significantly, InOOH nanoparticles not only effectively expedite the reduction of sulfur during the discharge process, but also dramatically accelerate the oxidation of Li₂S during the charge process, presenting the marvelous bidirectional catalytic effects. Benefited from these distinctive superiorities, the cells with InOOH nanoparticles harvest an excellent capacity retention of 69.5% over 500 cycles at 2C and a commendable discharge capacity of 891 mAh g^-1 under a high-sulfur loading of 5.0 mg cm^-2. The detailed investigations in this work provide a novel insight to ameliorate the Li-S electrochemistry by the bidirectional catalyst for high-performance Li-S batteries.

Keywords: Bidirectional catalyst; InOOH nanoparticles; Lithium–sulfur batteries; Polysulfide shuttle; Redox kinetics.