Battery and Fuel Cell Technology

Lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries are promising to be the next generation energy storage devices. Unfortunately, there are still many challenges for the practical application of Li-S batteries, such as the insulation of sulfur and the “shuttle effect” of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs). The introduction of carbon materials as a light, high electronic conductive host for sulfur and the inorganic compound as the polar host for the LiPSs has made some progress in solving these problems. Herein, for the first time, we present a new synthetic route to obtain the three-dimensional carbon-NiS2-carbon nanotubes (3DC-NiS2-CNTs) composites as the multi-functional host for Li-S batteries. The 3DC and CNTs are connected by the NiS2 nano particles, which serves as both effective entrapment and catalysis for LiPSs. The effective combination of graphene, CNTs and NiS2 can not only inherit their individual advantages, but also herald a new multi-functional nanostructured material with unexpected properties. As a consequence, electrochemical performance of the Li-S batteries employing a 3DC-CNTs-NiS2 host was enhanced significantly. The cell exhibits a high initial capacity 946 mAh g-1 and stable cycling performance at 1 C with a fade rate of 0.093% per cycle over 300 cycles.