Scalable Decoration of Ultrafine Metallic Grains via Hydrolysis‐Induced Deposition for Enhanced Sulfur Utilization in Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

Abstract Lithium‐sulfur batteries (LSBs) have been arousing great interests for their overwhelming superiority in theoretical specific energy, yet still suffering from facile diffusion and sluggish conversion of polysulfides. To strengthen chemical confinement and catalytic conversion toward polysulfides, ultrafine metallic species are frequently employed as active centers in LSBs cathodes. However, the rigorous procedures to narrow metallic grain size leave formidable challenges to efficiently deposit highly exposed metallic centers. Herein, a strategy of hydrolysis‐induced deposition within a cellulosic circumstance is proposed to enable a scalable decoration of ultrafine metallic grains via mild reaction conditions. The as‐obtained Ru atomic clusters serve as active centers to strongly localize the soluble polysulfides, and meanwhile significantly accelerate the kinetic conversion of polysulfides with the aid of unique Ru‐cellulose coordinated configuration. LSBs with the optimal h‐Ru@NC/CNTs hosts exhibit superior rate performance (712 mAh g −1 at 5.0C) and durable lifetime (773 mAh g −1 after 1000 cycles at 0.8C). This work paves the avenue of efficiently metallizing cellulose with highly exposed metallic surface and properly coordinated electronic structure to promote the utilization of sulfur species in LSBs.