Super-aligned films of sub-1 nm Bi2O3-polyoxometalate nanowires as interlayers in lithium-sulfur batteries

Sub-1 nm nanowires (SNWs) can not only be processed like polymers due to their polymer-analogue properties but also show multifunctions owing to well-manipulated compositions and structures. Rationally designed and engineering multicomponent heterostructure SNWs can further enhance their multifunction performance while it’s very challenging to achieve such SNWs at sub-nanoscale. Herein, we synthesize Bi2O3-polyoxometalate heterostructure SNWs (PMB SNWs), and fabricated super-aligned PMB SNWs films (S-PMB SNWs films), which can serve as interlayer to efficiently suppress lithium polysulfides (LPSs) shuttling, intrinsically promote the redox kinetics of the LPSs conversion and substantially protect the Li anode. The lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery with the S-PMB SNWs film as the interlayer showcase an ultralow capacity decay rate with 0.013 % per cycle over 850 cycles. This study demonstrates the potential of heterostructure SNWs to improve the performance of Li-S batteries.