Multilevel structured carbon film as cathode host for Li-S batteries with superhigh-areal-capacity

The commercialization of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery could be accelerated by designing advanced sulfur cathode with high sulfur utilization and stable cycle life at a high sulfur loading. To allow the energy density of Li-S batteries comparable to that of commercial Li-ion batteries, the areal capacity of sulfur cathode should be above 4 mA·h·cm−2. In general, a high sulfur loading often causes rapid capacity fading by slowing electron/ion transport kinetics, catastrophic shuttle effect and even cracking the electrodes. To address this issue, herein, a multilevel structured carbon film is built by covering highly conductive CNTs and hollow carbon nanofiber together with carbon layer via chemical vapor deposition. The self-standing carbon film exhibits well-interweaved conductive network, hollow fibrous structure and abundant N, O co-doped active sites, which combine the merits of high electronic conductivity (1200·S·m−1), high porosity and polar characteristic in one host. Benefiting from this attractive multilevel structure, the obtained sulfur cathode based on the carbon film host shows an ultra-high areal capacity of 8.9 mA·h·cm−2 at 0.2 C with outstanding cyclability over 60 cycles. This work shed light on designing advanced sulfur host for Li-S batteries with high areal capacity and high cycle stability, and might make a contribution to the commercialization of Li-S batteries.