Chainmail Catalyst of Fe₃O₄@C/CNTO‐Modified Celgard Separator with Low Metal Loading for High‐Performance Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

Abstract

Developing the conductive and catalytic composite interface is an efficient way to boost up the conversion of lithium polysulfide (LiPSs) that can effectively resolve the shuttle effect. Besides, achieving the high performance with low metal loading has practical significance for the commercialization of lithium–sulfur (Li−S) batteries. Herein, the chainmail catalyst of Fe3O4@C/CNTO was prepared by annealing the iron phthalocyanine (FePc)/oxidized carbon nanotubes (CNTO) precursor in which FePc was used as iron and carbon sources and CNTO was functionalized as oxygen source and catalyst support. The conductive composite catalyst with low metal loading (5.4 wt%) was applied into the coating layer of Celgard separator with duplex functions in trapping and catalyzing intercepted LiPSs for high‐performance Li−S batteries. This work can help us to understand the importance of conductive and catalytic composite interface for promotion of LiPSs conversion and also offer a more feasible synthesis method of electrocatalyst for other energy storage systems.

Rational design and low-cost fabrication of multifunctional separators enabling high sulfur utilization in long-life lithium-sulfur batteries

“…Furthermore, the Li-S battery based on the p-Fe 3 O 4 -NSs-PP separator yields a superior electrochemical performance to the representative Fe 3 O 4 -based or other functional separators reported in the recent literatures (table S4). It is worth noting that the preparation of the proposed p-Fe 3 O 4 -NSs is facile and scalable without any posttreatments like high-temperature annealing process [64,65] or compositing with other components [54,55,57] as reported in other researches, highlighting the advantage of using the newly-designed p-Fe 3 O 4 -NSs to prepare multifunctional separators at a low fabrication cost in this work. Since the use of conductive carbon materials like carbon nanotubes, carbon coating/layer and nano-carbon network can effectively improve the properties of electrode materials by facilitating fast electron transfer during cycling [66][67][68][69][70][71], a significant enhancement of electrochemical performance is expected for Li-S batteries with the incorporation of carbon materials with the proposed p-Fe 3 O 4 -NSs.…”

Infixing NiS2 nanospheres into a three‐dimensional rGO/CNTs‐Li carbon composite as superior electrocatalyst for high‐performance Li−S batteries

“…The electrochemical performance of the cells with NiS 2 @rGO/CNTs‐Li, rGO/CNTs‐Li and rGO/CNTs‐O was further measured using CV in the voltage window of 1.7–2.8 V at a scanning rate of 0.1 mV s −1 . As shown in Figure a, two characteristic redox peaks are attributed to S 8 Li 2 S n (4≤n≤8) and Li 2 S n (4≤n≤8) Li 2 S 2 /Li 2 S reversible conversion processes, respectively . Among the three cells, the cell with NiS 2 @rGO/CNTs‐Li exhibits the sharpest redox peaks suggesting the best redox kinetics of LiPSs.…”

Bimetal CoNi Active Sites on Mesoporous Carbon Nanosheets to Kinetically Boost Lithium−Sulfur Batteries

“…In order to further ease the shuttling, catalyst-type materials that can promote the conversion of polysulfides were applied on the separator. [32][33][34][35][36] A diverse range of nanomaterials is used in LSBs to speed up charge-discharge reactions, such as catalytic V 2 O 5 , [37] TiO 2 , [38] metal sulfides, [39] and metal particles including cobalt, [40] nickel, [41] and so on. It is well-demonstrated that the reaction of soluble polysulfides was catalyzed to accelerate the formation of insoluble lithium sulfides, thus remarkably inhibiting the shuttle effect of polysulfides.…”