Uniform Mesoporous MnO2 Nanospheres as a Surface Chemical Adsorption and Physical Confinement Polysulfide Mediator for Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

The actual implementation of lithium–sulfur batteries is hindered by inferior cyclic stability and poor coulombic efficiency stemming from the notorious shuttling of soluble polysulfide intermediates. Herein, uniform mesoporous MnO2 nanospheres were prepared using a facile self-assembly and room-temperature reaction method. As a sulfur carrier of sulfur cathodes, the versatile architecture of MnO2 not only provides powerful chemical adsorption to anchor polysulfide intermediates on the large polar surface area but also restrains them within the nanopores by physical confinement. The mesoporous MnO2-stabilized sulfur cathode demonstrates a high initial reversible capacity of 1349.3 mA h g–1 and a capacity fading rate of 0.073% at 1.0 C over 500 cycles. Furthermore, a reversible areal capacity of 2.5 mA h cm–2 was achieved with stable cycling performance at a sulfur content of 80.7%. Our work offers a facile method to build efficient sulfur cathodes for high performance lithium−sulfur batteries.