Recently, the iChEM researcher Prof. Quanfeng Dong’s group made new progress in novel cathode material for lithium-sulfur battery. Their research result was published on Energy & Environmental Science, a journal linking all aspects of the chemical, physical and biotechnological sciences relating to energy conversion and storage, alternative fuel technologies and environmental science, in the title of “A Novel Synergistic Composite with Multi-Functional effects for High-Performance Li-S Batteries”.

The battery with higher energy density has always been the goal that people pursue. As the next generation of high energy power, lithium sulfur battery has become the focus of research and industry. Using sulfur cathode and lithium anode, the energy can reach several times than the existing lithium ion battery. Sulfur cathode though having a history of 50 years, the further development of Li-S battery is still impeded by capacity decay and kinetic sluggishness caused by the polysulfide shuttle and electrode/electrolyte interface issue.

Herein, a new type of metal-organic-framework-derived sulfur host containing cobalt and N-doped graphitic carbon (Co-N-GC), in which catalyzing the S redox, entrapping the polysulfide and an ideal electronic matrix were achieved successfully and hence improved the Li-S performance significantly. Large surface area and uniform dispersion of cobalt nanoparticles within the N-doped graphitic carbon matrix have shown a distinct enhancement in the specific capacity, rate performance and cycle stability for Li-S batteries. The S@Co-N-GC electrode has been improved remarkably to a great potential to be used in low-cost and high-energy Li-S batteries. On the basis of the reaction mechanism of sulfur composite materials, they also put forward the concept of "multifunction, double catalyst," which had a guiding significance on the construction of new high energy electrochemical storage system. At the same time, the present work thus demonstrated that the S@Co-N-GC electrode had simple preparation and provided value of industrialization.

The experiments were completed by Ph.D Yijuan Li, Jingmin Fan and so on. All works above were done under iChEM researchers, professor Quanfeng Dong and associate professor Mingsen Zheng’s guidance. The research was funded by the National 973 Program (2015CB251102), the key project of NSFC (U1305246, 21321062), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (20720150042).

paper link：http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlepdf/2016/ee/c6ee00104a