1T-rich MoS2 nanosheets anchored on conductive porous carbon as effective polysulfide promoters for lithium–sulfur batteries

The practical applications of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have severely been hindered by notorious shuttle effect and sluggish redox kinetics of lithium polysulfide intermediates (LiPSs), which bring about rapid capacity degradation, low coulombic efficiency and poor cycling stability. In this work, 1T-rich MoS2 nanosheets are in-situ developed onto the conductive porous carbon matrix (1T-rich MoS2@PC) as efficient polysulfide promotors for high-performance Li-S batteries. The porous carbon skeleton tightly anchors MoS2 nanosheets to prevent their reaggregation and ensures accessible electrical channels, and at the same time provides a favorable confined space that promotes the generation of 1T-rich MoS2 structure. More importantly, the uniformly distributed metallic 1T-rich MoS2 nanosheets not only affords rich sulfphilic sites and high binding energy for immobilizing LiPSs, but also favors rapid electron transfer and LiPSs conversation kinetics, substantially regulating sulfur chemistry in working cells. Consequently, the Li-S cell assembled with 1T-rich MoS2@PC modified separator delivers a remarkable cycling stability with ultralow capacity decay rate of 0.067 % over 500 cycles at 1C. Encouragingly, under harsh conditions (high sulfur loading of 4.78 mg cm−2 and low E/S ratio of 8 μL mg−1), a favorable electrochemical performance can still be demonstrated. This study highlights the profitable design of 1T-rich MoS2/carbon based electrocatalyst for suppressing shuttle effect and promoting catalytic conversation of LiPSs, and has the potential to be applied to in other energy storage systems.