In situ wrapping of the cathode material in lithium-sulfur batteries

While lithium-sulfur batteries are poised to be the next-generation high-density energy storage devices, the intrinsic polysulfide shuttle has limited their practical applications. Many recent investigations have focused on the development of methods to wrap the sulfur material with a diffusion barrier layer. However, there is a trade-off between a perfect preassembled wrapping layer and electrolyte infiltration into the wrapped sulfur cathode. Here, we demonstrate an in situ wrapping approach to construct a compact layer on carbon/sulfur composite particles with an imperfect wrapping layer. This special configuration suppresses the shuttle effect while allowing polysulfide diffusion within the interior of the wrapped composite particles. As a result, the wrapped cathode for lithium-sulfur batteries greatly improves the Coulombic efficiency and cycle life. Importantly, the capacity decay of the cell at 1000 cycles is as small as 0.03% per cycle at 1672 mA g^-1.To suppress the polysulfide shuttling effect in Li-S batteries, here the authors report a carbon/sulfur composite cathode with a wrapping layer that overcomes the trade-off between limiting polysulfide diffusion and allowing electrolyte infiltration, and affords extraordinary cycling stability.