Chessboard Structured Electrode Design for Li-S Batteries Based on MXene Nanosheets

Abstract Mediating the conversion kinetics and suppressing the shuttle effect are of vital importance for the pursue of high-capacity and long-lifetime lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. Herein, a chessboard like electrode is proposed to tackle these problems, where MXene nanosheets function as “chessboards” to provide a conductive skeleton for the rapid conversion of polysulfides to Li2S and the sulfur-loaded mesoporous carbon nanospheres (S@MCS-SiO2) work as “chesspieces” to carry polysulfides through physical confinement and chemical adsorption. A uniform Li2S precipitation with a high capacity and a series of highly reversible solid-liquid/liquid-solid phase reactions are demonstrated by experimental results. Under this regard, the proposed S@MCS-SiO2/MXene electrode displays excellent electrochemical performance, with an initial discharge specific capacity of 1303.6 mA h g-1 at 0.1C and a small attenuation rate per cycle of 0.046% in 1000 cycles at 1C.