Diminishing Self‐Discharge of High‐Loading Li−S Batteries with Oxygen‐Rich Biomass Carbon Interlayers

Lithium-sulfur batteries (Li-S) have possessed gratifying development in the past decade due to their high theoretical energy density. However, the severe polysulfide shuttling provokes undesirable self-discharge effect, leading to low energy efficiency in Li-S batteries. Herein, an interlayer composed of oxygen-rich carbon nanosheets (OCN) derived from bagasse is elaborated to suppress the shuttle effect and reduce the resultant self-discharge effect. The OCN interlayer is able to physically block the shuttling behavior of polysulfides and its oxygen-rich functional groups can strongly interact with polysulfides via O-S bonds to chemically immobilize mobile polysulfides. The self-discharge test for seven days further shows that the self-discahrge rate is diminished by impressive 93 %. As a result, Li-S batteries with the OCN interlayer achieve an ultrahigh discharge specific capacity of 710 mAh g