Electrospun CuCoN0.6 coating necklace-like N-doped carbon nanofibers for high performance lithium-sulfur batteries

Dan Liu; Zicheng Wang; Zichen Guo; Yuan Tian; Cheng Wang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.183

Electrospun CuCoN_0.6 coating necklace-like N-doped carbon nanofibers for high performance lithium-sulfur batteries

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2023 Sep:645:705-714. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.183. Epub 2023 May 6.

Authors

Dan Liu¹, Zicheng Wang¹, Zichen Guo¹, Yuan Tian², Cheng Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute for New Energy Materials and Low-Carbon Technologies, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Porous Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, PR China.
² Institute for New Energy Materials and Low-Carbon Technologies, Tianjin Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Porous Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin 300384, PR China. Electronic address: tianyuan@email.tjut.edu.cn.

PMID: 37172480
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2023.04.183

Abstract

Freestanding electrodes with high energy density and cycle stability have attracted attention on the development of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. However, both severe shuttle effect and sluggish conversion kinetics hinder their practical applications. Herein, we employed the electrospinning and subsequent nitridation processes to prepare a necklace-like structure of CuCoN_0.6 nanoparticles anchored on N-doped carbon nanofibers (CuCoN_0.6/NC) as freestanding sulfur host for Li-S batteries. Such bimetallic nitride boosts chemical adsorption and catalytic activity throughout detailed theoretical calculation and experimental electrochemical characterization. The three-dimensional conductive necklace-like framework could provide abundant cavities for realizing high sulfur utilization and alleviating the volume variation, as well as fast lithium-ions diffusion and electron transfer. The Li-S cell with the S@CuCoN_0.6/NC cathode delivers a stable cycling performance with a capacity attenuation rate of 0.076% per cycle after 150cycles at 2.0C and an exceptional capacity retention of 657 mAh g^-1 even at a high sulfur loading of 6.8 mg cm^-2 over 100cycles. The facile and scalable method can help promote the widespread application of fabrics.

Keywords: Bimetallic nitrides; DFT calculations; Lithium-sulfur batteries; Necklace-like structure; Polysulfide electrocatalysis.