In this communication, we introduce the concept of three dimensional (3D) battery electrodes to enhance the capacity per footprint area for lithium-sulfur battery. In such a battery, 3D electrode of sulfur embedded into porous graphene sponges (S-GS) was directly used as the cathode with large areal mass loading of sulfur (12 mg cm−2), approximately 6–12 times larger than that of most reports. The graphene sponges (GS) worked as a framework that can provide high electronic conductive network, abilities to absorb the polysulfides intermediate, and meanwhile mechanical support to accommodate the volume changes during charge and discharge. As a result, the S-GS electrode with 80 wt.% sulfur can deliver an extremely high areal specific capacitance of 6.0 mAh cm−2 of the 11th cycle, and maintain 4.2 mAh cm−2 after 300 charge−discharge cycles at a rate of 0.1C, representing an extremely low decay rate (0.08% per cycle after 300 cycles), which could be the highest areal specific capacity with comparable cycle stability among the rechargeable Li/S batteries reported ever.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are a promising candidate of next generation energy storage systems owing to its high theoretical capacity and energy density. However, to date, its commercial application was hindered by the inherent problems of sulfur cathode. Additionally, with the rapid decline of non-renewable resources and active appeal of green chemistry, the intensive research of new electrode materials was conducted worldwide. We have obtained a sheet-like carbon material (shaddock peel carbon sheets SPCS) from organic waste shaddock peel, which can be used as the conductive carbon matrix for sulfur-based cathodes. Furthermore, the raw materials are low-cost, truly green and recyclable. As a result, the sulfur cathode made with SPCS (SPCS-S), can deliver a high reversible capacity of 722.5 mAh g−1 at 0.2 C after 100 cycles with capacity recuperability of ~90%, demonstrating that the SPCS-S hybrid is of great potential as the cathode for rechargeable Li-S batteries. The high electrochemical performance of SPCS-S hybrid could be attributed to the sheet-like carbon network with large surface area and high conductivity of the SPCS, in which the carbon sheets enable the uniform distribution of sulfur, better ability to trap the soluble polysulfides and accommodate volume expansion/shrinkage of sulfur during repeated charge/discharge cycles.

Binder-free cathodes based on sulfur–carbon nanofiber composites were prepared through a liquid process and showed good performance for lithium–sulfur batteries.

A strategy of reinforced PPy wrapping over an acetylene black-coated sulfur composite (PPy–AB/S) was designed for high-performance Li–S batteries.