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Corresponding Author

Xue-ping GAO(xpgao@nankai.edu.cn)

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur battery is one of the most promising secondary battery systems due to its super high theoretical gravimetric and volumetric energy densities (2600 Wh·kg-1 and 2800 Wh·L-1, respectively). However, the practical volumetric capacity of sulfur cathode is still unsatisfied due to the overuse of low-density host materials, such as carbon nanomaterials. Herein, commercial LiCoO2 with the high tap density of 2.94 g·cm-3 was used as the host material to build high density sulfur-based composite and compact electrode for increasing the volumetric capacity. Obviously, the tap density of the as-prepared S/LiCoO2 composite was 1.90 g·cm-3, larger than that of the conventional S/carbon composite (0.89 g·cm-3). Correspondingly, the pressed electrode density could be increased to 2.60 g·cm-3 by using the S/LiCoO2 composite. In particular, LiCoO2 showed an effective adsorption and electrocatalytic conversion toward soluble intermediate polysulfides, and facilitied to achieve the high utilization of sulfur and cycle stability. As expected, the S/LiCoO2 composite exhibited larger capacity and slower capacity decay rate at 0.1 C rate as compared with the S/carbon composite. Meanwhile, the polarization in discharge-charge processes was smaller for the S/LiCoO2 composite, showing the enhanced reaction kinetics by adopting LiCoO2 host. Therefore, the S/LiCoO2 composite showed superior rate capability and cycle performance at large current density. By virtue of the high tap density, the S/LiCoO2 composite delivered a larger volumetric capacity (1750.5 mAh·cm-3-composite), almost 2.2 times of the S/carbon composite (811.4 mAh·cm-3-composite). Furthermore, the volumetric capacity of the pressed S/LiCoO2 electrode could reach 1676.8 mAh·cm-3-electrode based on the electrode level, almost 2.5 times of the S/carbon electrode (676.5 mAh·cm-3-electrode). This work provides a feasible strategy to achieve the high volumetric capacity and energy density of cathode based on LiCoO2 as sulfur host, which provides reference for further developing high volumetric energy density cathode materials for lithium-sulfur battery.

Graphical Abstract

Keywords

lithium-sulfur battery, sulfur cathode, metal oxides, volumetric capacity

Publication Date

2020-10-28

Online Available Date

2020-07-21

Revised Date

2020-07-15

Received Date

2020-06-15

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