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Nano Research 2018, 11(8): 4302-4312 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2017-9
Research Article | Issue | Published: 12 March 2018

Titanium nitride hollow nanospheres with strong lithium polysulfide chemisorption as sulfur hosts for advanced lithium-sulfur batteries

Show Author's Information Chuanchuan Li1,  Jingjing Shi3,  Lin Zhu1,  Yingyue Zhao1,  Jun Lu3( ),  Liqiang Xu1,2( )
Key Laboratory of Colloid & Interface Chemistry (Shandong University)Ministry of EducationSchool of Chemistry and Chemical EngineeringShandong UniversityJinan250100China
Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education)Nankai UniversityTianjin300071China
Faculty of ScienceBeijing University of Chemical TechnologyBeijing100000China
Keywords:
lithium-sulfur batteries, TiN hollow spheres, polysulfide trapping, DFT calculations
Cite this article:
Li C, Shi J, Zhu L, et al. Titanium nitride hollow nanospheres with strong lithium polysulfide chemisorption as sulfur hosts for advanced lithium-sulfur batteries. Nano Research, 2018, 11(8): 4302-4312. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-018-2017-9
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Lithium-sulfur batteries are promising electrochemical energy storage devices because of their high theoretical specific capacity and energy density. An ideal sulfur host should possess high conductivity and embrace the physical confinement or strong chemisorption to dramatically suppress the polysulfide dissolution. Herein, uniform TiN hollow nanospheres with an average diameter of ~160 nm have been reported as highly efficient lithium polysulfide reservoirs for high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries. Combining the high conductivity and chemical trapping of lithium polysulfides, the obtained S/TiN cathode of 70 wt.% sulfur content in the composite delivered an excellent long-life cycling performance at 0.5C and 1.0C over 300 cycles. More importantly, a stable capacity of 710.4 mAh·g?1 could be maintained even after 100 cycles at 0.2C with a high sulfur loading of 3.6 mg·cm?1. The nature of the interactions between TiN and lithium polysulfide species was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies. Theoretical calculations were also carried out and the results revealed a strong binding between TiN and the lithium polysulfide species. It is expected that this class of conductive and polar materials would pave a new way for the high-energy lithium-sulfur batteries in the future.


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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

Titanium nitride hollow nanospheres with strong lithium polysulfide chemisorption as sulfur hosts for advanced lithium-sulfur batteries

Show Author's information Chuanchuan Li1, Jingjing Shi3, Lin Zhu1, Yingyue Zhao1, Jun Lu3( ), Liqiang Xu1,2( )
Key Laboratory of Colloid & Interface Chemistry (Shandong University)Ministry of EducationSchool of Chemistry and Chemical EngineeringShandong UniversityJinan250100China
Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy Materials Chemistry (Ministry of Education)Nankai UniversityTianjin300071China
Faculty of ScienceBeijing University of Chemical TechnologyBeijing100000China

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur batteries are promising electrochemical energy storage devices because of their high theoretical specific capacity and energy density. An ideal sulfur host should possess high conductivity and embrace the physical confinement or strong chemisorption to dramatically suppress the polysulfide dissolution. Herein, uniform TiN hollow nanospheres with an average diameter of ~160 nm have been reported as highly efficient lithium polysulfide reservoirs for high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries. Combining the high conductivity and chemical trapping of lithium polysulfides, the obtained S/TiN cathode of 70 wt.% sulfur content in the composite delivered an excellent long-life cycling performance at 0.5C and 1.0C over 300 cycles. More importantly, a stable capacity of 710.4 mAh·g?1 could be maintained even after 100 cycles at 0.2C with a high sulfur loading of 3.6 mg·cm?1. The nature of the interactions between TiN and lithium polysulfide species was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies. Theoretical calculations were also carried out and the results revealed a strong binding between TiN and the lithium polysulfide species. It is expected that this class of conductive and polar materials would pave a new way for the high-energy lithium-sulfur batteries in the future.

Keywords: lithium-sulfur batteries, TiN hollow spheres, polysulfide trapping, DFT calculations

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 13 December 2017
Revised: 21 January 2018
Accepted: 01 February 2018
Published: 12 March 2018
Issue date: August 2018

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This work is supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (No. 21471091), 111 Project (No. B12015), the Fundamental Research Funds of Shandong University (No. 2015JC007), Academy of Sciences large apparatus United Fund (No. 11179043), and the Taishan Scholar Project of Shandong Province (No. ts201511004).

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