Proceedings of MATSUS Spring 2024 Conference (MATSUS24)
Publication date: 18th December 2023
Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) hold great potential as future energy storage technology, but their widespread application is hampered by the slow polysulfide conversion kinetics and the sulfur loss during cycling. In this study, we detail a one-step approach to growing tungsten phosphide (WP) nanoparticles on the surface of nitrogen and phosphorus co-doped carbon nanosheets (WP@NPC). We further demonstrate that this material provides outstanding performance as a multifunctional separator in LSBs, enabling higher sulfur utilization and exceptional rate performance. These excellent properties are associated with the abundance of lithium polysulfide (LiPS) adsorption and catalytic conversion sites and rapid ion transport capabilities. Experimental data and density functional theory calculations demonstrate tungsten to have a sulfophilic character while nitrogen and phosphorus provide lithiophilic sites that prevent the loss of LiPSs. Furthermore, WP regulates the LiPS catalytic conversion, accelerating the Li-S redox kinetics. As a result, LSBs containing a polypropylene separator coated with a WP@NPC layer show capacities close to 1500 mAh g-1 at 0.1C and coulombic efficiencies above 99.5% at 3C. Batteries with high sulfur loading, 4.9 mg cm−2, are further produced to validate their superior cycling stability. This work demonstrates the use of multifunctional separators as an effective strategy to promote LSB performance
The authors thank the support from the projects ENE2016-77798-C4-3-R and NANOGEN (PID2020-116093RB-C43), funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033/ and by “ERDF A way of making Europe,” by the “European Union.” C., J.Y., C.Q.Z. and K.X. thank the China Scholarship Council for the scholarship support. D.W. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grants No. 22305064). ICN2 acknowledges the support from the Severo Ochoa Programme (CEX2021-001214-S). IREC and ICN2 are both funded by the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya (2021SGR00457, 2021SGR01581). This project has received funding from the Advanced Materials program and was supported by MCIN with funding from European Union Next Generation EU (PRTR-C17.I1) and by Generalitat de Catalunya. The authors acknowledge support from the 2BoSS project of the ERA-MIN3 program with the Spanish grant number PCI2022-132985/AEI/10.13039/501100011033. The calculations were supported by the Welch Foundation (F-1841) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center.