Multifunctional Effects of Sulfonyl-Anchored, Dual-Doped Multilayered Graphene for High Areal Capacity Lithium Sulfur Batteries

Li–S batteries (LSBs) require a minimum 6 mAh cm–2 areal capacity to compete with the state-of-the-art lithium ion batteries (LIBs). However, this areal capacity is difficult to achieve due to a major technical issue—the shuttle effect. Nonpolar carbon materials limit the shuttle effect through physical confinement. However, the polar polysulfides (PSs) only provide weak intermolecular interactions (0.1–0.7 eV) with these nonpolar carbon materials. The physically encapsulated PSs inside the nonpolar carbon scaffold eventually diffuses out and starts shuttling. Chemically interactive hosts are more effective at interacting with the PSs due to high binding energies. Herein, a multifunctional separator coating of nitrogen-doped multilayer graphene (NGN) and −SO3– containing Nafion (N-NGN) is used to mitigate PS shuttling and to produce a high areal capacity LSB. The Nafion is used as a binder instead of PVDF to provide an additional advantage of −SO3– to chemically bind the PS. The motive of this research is...