High surface area porous polymer frameworks: Potential host material for lithium-sulfur batteries

Lithium-sulfur battery is one of the most promising energy storage systems for its high specific capacity. However, commercial development of lithium-sulfur batteries is severely hindered by the cathode host materials. To tackle this issue, we synthesized a new host material, high surface area, three-dimensional (3D) diamond-cage porous polymer frameworks PPN-13, to construct sulfur electrode by impregnating sulfur into its nano-pores. The PPN-13-S cathode deliveries a specific discharge capacity up to 606.4 mA h/g over 100 cycles at 0.1 C with a high coulombic efficiency. It demonstrates that the 3D porous structure PPN-13 as host material shows the high performance and a remarkable positive effect on the capacity retention as cathode materials in lithium-sulfur batteries. Due to the unique features of the material, our research provides a new type of materials for tailoring cathode materials in lithium-sulfur batteries. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.