Lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries are considered to be one of the most promising candidate systems for next‐generation electrochemical energy storage. The major challenge of this system is the polysulfide shuttle, which results in poor cycling efficiency. In this work, a highly N‐doped carbon/graphene (NC/G) sheet is designed as a sulfur host, which combines the merits of abundant N active sites and high electrical conductivity to achieve in situ anchoring–conversion of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs). Such a host not only has strong binding with LiPSs but also promotes redox kinetics, which are revealed by both experimental investigations and theoretical studies. The sulfur cathode based on the NC/G host exhibits a high initial capacity of 1380 mA h g−1 and a superior cycle stability with a low capacity decay of 0.037% per cycle within 500 cycles at 2 C. Steady areal capacity with a high sulfur loading (5.6 mg cm−2) is also attained even without the addition of LiNO3 in the electrolyte. This work proposes and illustrates the importance of in situ anchoring–conversion of LiPSs, offering a new strategy to design multifunctional sulfur hosts for high‐performance Li–S batteries.
Metal−organic frameworks (MOFs) hold great potential as CO 2 adsorbents; however, the long reaction time that is required for the preparation of MOFs by a hydrothermal or solvothermal method is a hurdle for largescale production. In this work, we synthesize a moisture-stable nitrogen-abundant cobalt-based MOF, i.e., Co-PL-1, using microwave irradiation for the first time (denoted as MW-Co-PL-1). Compared to hydrothermal synthesis, which always requires 3 days at 180 °C, only 30 min at the same temperature is required for the microwave synthesis. The resulting MW-Co-PL-1 shows high CO 2 uptake, especially at low CO 2 partial pressure (89 mg g −1 at 298 K, 1 bar and 53 mg g −1 at 298 K, 0.15 bar), good capture selectivity against N 2 (19.8 at 1 bar and 44 at 0.15 bar), reversible CO 2 uptake during consecutive adsorption−desorption cycles, and very robust structure stability under moisture conditions. The highly efficient synthesis, together with great performance, makes the microwave synthesis of Co-PL-1 promising for large-scale CO 2 capture, which demonstrates a new way for large-scale application of MOFs in the near future.
We develop a mesoporous silica-based cathode for efficient trapping of lithium polysulfides. This cathode consists of a mesoporous silica (HMS), highly dispersed NiO nanoparticles embedded in the silica structure and a conductive polymer prepared by in situ polymerization.
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