The shuttling behavior and sluggish conversion kinetics of the intermediate lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) represent the main obstructions to the practical application of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries. Herein, an anion‐deficient design of antimony selenide (Sb2Se3−x) is developed to establish a multifunctional LiPS barrier toward the inhibition of polysulfide shuttling and enhancement of battery performance. The defect chemistry in the as‐developed Sb2Se3−x promotes the intrinsic conductivity, strengthens the chemical affinity to LiPSs, and catalyzes the sulfur electrochemical conversion, which are verified by a series of computational and experimental results. Attributed to these unique superiorities, the obtained LiPS barrier efficiently promotes and stabilizes the sulfur electrochemistry, thus enabling excellent Li–S battery performance, e.g., outstanding cyclability over 500 cycles at 1.0 C with a minimum capacity fading rate of 0.027% per cycle, a superb rate capability up to 8.0 C, and a high areal capacity of 7.46 mAh cm−2 under raised sulfur loading. This work offers a defect engineering strategy toward fast and durable sulfur electrochemistry, holding great promise in developing practically viable Li–S batteries as well as enlightening the material design of related energy storage and conversion systems.
Left-handed metamaterials (LHMs) have recently been the focus of both scientific and engineering communities. [1,2] Simultaneously possessing negative dielectric permittivity e and magnetic permeability m, LHMs exhibit unique electromagnetic properties compared with normal, right-handed materials while still obeying Maxwell's equation and not violating known physical laws.[3] Although obtaining the e < 0 response was relatively easy, the realization of m < 0 response beyond MHz has been a challenge, owing to the absence of naturally occurring magnetic materials. In the late 1990s, Pendry theoretically proposed that LHMs can be realized in a composite materials form consisting of metallic wires and split-ring resonators (SRRs) components. [4,5] It was shown that a grid of thin conducting wires can produce a negative permittivity near its plasmonic frequency, and that an array of SRRs can produce a negative permeability in the vicinity of a certain magnetic resonance frequency v m . Because the electric resonance frequency of metallic wires and magnetic resonance frequency of SRRs are mainly dependant on their structural parameters, left-handed behavior in a given frequency can be realized if the electric and magnetic resonance frequency drop into the same region through adjusting the structural parameters of the metallic wires and SRRs, respectively. Since the first realization and verification of an artificial LHM at microwave frequencies in 2000, [6] there have been numerous studies on various aspects of LHMs, seeking their inner physics and pursuing possible applications. At the same time, much effort has been put into the fabrication and investigation of LHMs at IR and visible light frequencies.
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