Oxygen-defective MnO2 decorated carbon nanotube as an effective sulfur host for high performance lithium sulfur battery

The incorporation of sulfur with multifunctional conductive host material has been regarded as a promising strategy to improve the sulfur utilization and mitigate the polysulfides diffusion for high-performance Li-S battery. Herein, an oxygen-defective MnO2 nanoparticles modified carbon nanotube composite (CNT/OD-MnO2) has been proposed as multifunctional sulfur host materials. In the CNT/OD-MnO2, the continuous CNT frameworks provide abundant conduction paths of electrons, and the oxygen-defective MnO2 nanoparticles can accelerate the adsorption and conversion process of polysulfides during the charge–discharge process. As expected, the derived sulfur cathode exhibits superior electrochemical properties with the assistance of CNT/OD-MnO2. Compared with the CNT/MnO2-S (61.8%) and CNT-S (38.8%) cathodes, the CNT/OD-MnO2-S cathode delivers a higher capacity retention of 81.3% even after 300 cycles. These results confirm the promising application of CNT/OD-MnO2 as an effective sulfur host material for advanced Li-S battery.