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Enabling High-Areal-Capacity Lithium–Sulfur Batteries: Designing Anisotropic and Low-Tortuosity Porous Architectures
journal contribution
posted on 2017-05-09, 00:00 authored by Yiju Li, Kun “Kelvin” Fu, Chaoji Chen, Wei Luo, Tingting Gao, Shaomao Xu, Jiaqi Dai, Glenn Pastel, Yanbin Wang, Boyang Liu, Jianwei Song, Yanan Chen, Chunpeng Yang, Liangbing HuLithium–sulfur
(Li–S) batteries have attracted much
attention due to their high theoretical energy density in comparison
to conventional state-of-the-art lithium-ion batteries. However, low
sulfur mass loading in the cathode results in low areal capacity and
impedes the practical use of Li–S cells. Inspired by wood,
a cathode architecture with natural, three-dimensionally (3D) aligned
microchannels filled with reduced graphene oxide (RGO) were developed
as an ideal structure for high sulfur mass loading. Compared with
other carbon materials, the 3D porous carbon matrix has several advantages
including low tortuosity, high electrical conductivity, and good structural
stability, which make it an excellent 3D lightweight current collector.
The Li–S battery assembled with the wood-based sulfur electrode
can deliver a high areal capacity of 15.2 mAh cm–2 with a sulfur mass loading of 21.3 mg cm–2. This
work provides a facile but effective strategy to develop 3D porous
electrodes for Li–S batteries, which can also be applied to
other cathode materials to achieve a high areal capacity with uncompromised
rate and cycling performance.