A facile synthetic strategy of free-standing holey graphene paper as sulfur host for high-performance flexible lithium sulfur batteries

Abstract The novel and facile synthetic strategy to prepare holey reduced graphene oxide free-standing paper (HGP) as a host material of Li S battery. By graphene oxide (GO) etched with H2O2, holey graphene oxide was obtained, which is further reduced and compressed to form HGP as sulfur host. HGP can be utilized not only as a flexible framework to carry sulfur but also as a conductive skeleton for electron transport and capture polysulfides formed during the cycle. The large specific area and holey structures could further increase the sulfur content, and prevent the cathode material structure from collapsing due to the expansion of sulfur volume. The flexible Li S battery based on HGP/S electrodes exhibited an initial capacity of 1073.2 mAh g−1 and retained discharge capacity of 681 mAh g−1 after 200 cycles at 0.1C under continuous bending.