A Soft Approach to Encapsulate Sulfur: Polyaniline Nanotubes for Lithium‐Sulfur Batteries with Long Cycle Life

Abstract

A novel vulcanized polyaniline nanotube/sulfur composite was prepared successfully via an in situ vulcanization process by heating a mixture of polyaniline nanotube and sulfur at 280 °C. The electrode could retain a discharge capacity of 837 mAh g(-1) after 100 cycles at a 0.1 C rate and manifested 76% capacity retention up to 500 cycles at a 1 C rate.

Leaf‐Like Graphene‐Oxide‐Wrapped Sulfur for High‐Performance Lithium–Sulfur Battery

“…All the capacity retention and capacity degradation are calculated from the third cycle after achieving stabilized capacity. The achieved cycling ability in Figure 5c,d is much better than that of most previous reports 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48. Only very recently, Cui and co‐workers51 successfully demonstrated that the TiO 2 /S yolk–shell composites can be cycled over 1000 times with a capacity decay of 0.033% per cycle.…”

“…The battery delivers a reversible discharge capacity of 1250 mAh g −1 at current rate of 0.1 C that slowly reduced to 1130 mAh g −1 at 0.2 C , 930 mAh g −1 at 0.5 C , 753 mAh g −1 at 1 C , and 685 mAh g −1 at 2 C . Even at high rate of 4 C (6680 mA g −1 ), the leaf‐like GO/S cathode still can deliver a capacity of 468 mAh g −1 , which is almost the best rate performance of C/S composite cathode 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 45, 46, 48, 51, 52, 53…”

“…However, the insulating nature of sulfur (S) and its reaction products (i.e., Li 2 S), the large volume expansion from S to Li 2 S, along with the dissolution of lithium polysulfide intermediates (i.e., Li 2 S x , 4 ≤ x ≤ 8) into liquid electrolyte and the consequent shuttling effect between the anode and cathode, makes it generally display poor rate ability, limited cycle life and severe self‐discharge 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Therefore, a variety of strategies have been pursued to circumvent the sulfur cathode problems, including optimization of organic electrolytes8, 9 and fabrication of sulfur‐conductive polymer composites10, 11 and sulfur–carbon‐based composites 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45. Among these approaches, porous‐carbon/sulfur composites12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 are more attractive because porous carbon can i...…”

Lithium–sulphur batteries with a microporous carbon paper as a bifunctional interlayer

“…With this perspective, there is increasing interest in recent years in the Li-S battery research. Development of a high capacity (4800 mA h g À 1 ) Li-S system with a long, acceptable cycle life will give this system a greater opportunity to be commercialized in the near future [2][3][4][5] .…”

“…Employing sulphur-carbon composites and applying conductive polymer surface modification are the main approaches in laboratories around the world to realize high capacity and improved cycle life [2][3][4][5][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] . Both approaches enhance the electrical conductivity of the cathode and suppress the loss of soluble polysulphide intermediates during cycling and thereby improve the active material utilization and cyclability.…”