Issue 19/2020 - New hollow carbon sphere nanoreactor improves lithium-sulfur battery performance

The new hollow carbon sphere nanoreactor improves the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries

Recently, researchers at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a hollow carbon sphere nanoreactor
modified with single-atom zinc.
The reactor can be used as the matrix of the positive electrode and the negative electrode of the lithium-sulfur battery at the same time, improve the catalytic activity of polysulfides and inhibit the growth of dendrites of the lithium anode, and the high specific energy of the reactor lithium-sulfur full battery has the properties of
high load, high rate and long cycle.

Aiming at the problems and key technical bottlenecks of lithium-sulfur batteries, this study has developed an atomic-scale, single-atomic-zinc-modified hollow carbon shell nanoreactor
.
The reactor has high specific surface area, multi-stage pore structure, good lithium-loving metal surface, and excellent catalytic activity
.
It is applied to the positive electrode and negative electrode of lithium-sulfur battery at the same time, which improves the adsorption catalytic conversion ability of the positive electrode to polysulfides and inhibits the growth
of lithium dendrites of the negative electrode.
Under the condition of 700 long cycles, the capacity decay rate of the battery is only 0.
015%; At high current densities, there is still a specific capacity
of 989 mAh/g.
The design strategy of this hollow carbon shell nanoreactor provides a reference
for the design of high-energy density energy devices such as lithium-sulfur batteries based on conversion reactions.