High Volumetric Energy Density Sulfur Cathode with Heavy and Catalytic Metal Oxide Host for Lithium–Sulfur Battery

Abstract

For high-energy lithium-sulfur batteries, the poor volumetric energy density is a bottleneck as compared with lithium-ion batteries, due to the low density of both the sulfur active material and sulfur host. Herein, in order to enhance the volumetric energy density of sulfur cathode, a universal approach is proposed to fabricate a compact sulfur cathode with dense materials as sulfur host, instead of the old-fashioned lightweight carbon nanomaterials. Based on this strategy, heavy lanthanum strontium manganese oxide (La_0.8Sr_0.2MnO₃), with a high theoretical density of up to 6.5 g cm^-3, is introduced as sulfur host. Meanwhile, the La_0.8Sr_0.2MnO₃ host also acts as an efficient electrocatalyst to accelerate the diffusion, adsorption, and redox dynamics of lithium polysulfides in the charge-discharge processes. As a result, such S/La_0.8Sr_0.2MnO₃ cathode presents high gravimetric/volumetric capacity and outstanding cycling stability. Moreover, an ultra-high volumetric energy density of 2727 Wh L^-1 _-cathode is achieved based on the densification effect with higher density (1.69 g cm^-3), which is competitive to the Ni-rich oxide cathode (1800-2160 Wh L^-1) of lithium-ion batteries. The current study opens up a path for constructing high volumetric capacity sulfur cathode with heavy and catalytic host toward practical applications of lithium-sulfur batteries.