Enhanced Multiple Anchoring and Catalytic Conversion of Polysulfides by Amorphous MoS3 Nanoboxes for High-Performance Li-S Batteries

The practical implementation of lithium-sulfur batteries is obstructed by poor conductivity, sluggish redox kinetics, the shuttle effect, large volume variation, and low areal loading of sulfur electrodes. Now, amorphous N-doped carbon/MoS3 (NC/MoS3) nanoboxes with hollow porous architectures have been meticulously designed as an advanced sulfur host. Benefiting from the enhanced conductivity by the N-doped carbon, reduced shuttle effect by the strong chemical interaction between unsaturated Mo and lithium polysulfides, improved redox reaction kinetics by the catalytic effect of MoS3, great tolerance of volume variation and high sulfur loading arising from flexible amorphous materials with hollow-porous structures, the amorphous NC/MoS3 nanoboxes enabled sulfur electrodes to deliver a high areal capacity with superior rate capacity and decent cycling stability. The synthetic strategy can be generalized to fabricate other amorphous metal sulfide nanoboxes.