Crystalline Multi-Metallic Compounds as Host Materials in Cathode for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery is one of the most promising next-generation rechargeable batteries. Lots of fundamental research has been done for the problems during cycling like capacity fading and columbic efficiency reducing owing to severe diffusion and migration of polysulfide intermediates. In the early stage, a wide variety of carbon materials are used as host materials for sulfur to enhance electrical conductivity and adsorb soluble polysulfides. Beyond carbon materials, metal based polar compounds are introduced as host materials for sulfur because of their strong catalytic activity and adsorption ability to suppress the shuttle effect. In addition, relatively high density of metal compounds is helpful for increasing volumetric energy density of Li-S batteries. This review focuses on crystalline multi-metal compounds as host materials in sulfur cathodes. The multi-metal compounds involve not only transition metal composite oxides with specific crystalline structures, binary metal chalcogenides, double or complex salts, but also the metal compounds doped or partially substituted by other metal ions. Generally, for the multi-metal compounds, microstructure and morphologies in micro-nano scale are very significant for mass transfer in electrodes; moreover, adsorption and catalytic ability for polysulfides make fast kinetics in the electrode processes.

La2MoO6 as an Effective Catalyst for the Cathode Reactions of Lithium-Sulfur Batteries.

Lithium-sulfur batteries with high theoretical energy density have emerged as one of the most promising next-generation rechargeable batteries, while their discharge capacity and cycle stability are challenges mainly due to the shuttle effect of polysulfide intermediates. Employing an effective catalyst for the conversion of polysulfides in cathode reactions can promote the reaction kinetics to restrain the shuttle of polysulfides. Here, for the first time, La2MoO6 (LMO) as a catalyst is introduced into sulfur cathodes. To investigate the effect of La2MoO6, we prepare two different structures of La2MoO6/carbon nanofiber composites. One is carbon nanofiber-supported crystalline La2MoO6 nanoparticles (LMO@CNFs) and the other is amorphous La2MoO6 nanoparticles embedded in carbon nanofibers (LMO-in-CNFs). For sulfur electrodes with ∼73 wt % sulfur loading, LMO@CNFs/S and LMO-in-CNFs/S deliver initial gravimetric capacities of 1493.4 and 1246.7 mA h g-1, respectively, at a 0.1C rate, obviously higher than that of the control sample CNFs/S. Moreover, LMO@CNFs/S shows much better rate performance than LMO-in-CNFs/S, indicating strongly that La2MoO6 is a highly effective catalyst to promote kinetic conversion of polysulfides.