Functional Mesoporous Carbon-Coated Separator for Long-Life, High-Energy Lithium-Sulfur Batteries

The lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery is regarded as the most promising rechargeable energy storage technology for the increasing applications of clean energy transportation systems due to its remarkable high theoretical energy density of 2.6 kWh kg(-1), considerably outperforming today's lithium-ion batteries. Additionally, the use of sulfur as active cathode material has the advantages of being inexpensive, environmentally benign, and naturally abundant. However, the insulating nature of sulfur, the fast capacity fading, and the short lifespan of Li-S batteries have been hampered their commercialization. In this paper, a functional mesoporous carbon-coated separator is presented for improving the overall performance of Li-S batteries. A straightforward coating modification of the commercial polypropylene separator allows the integration of a conductive mesoporous carbon layer which offers a physical place to localize dissolved polysulfide intermediates and retain them as active material within the cathode side. Despite the use of a simple sulfur-carbon black mixture as cathode, the Li-S cell with a mesoporous carbon-coated separator offers outstanding performance with an initial capacity of 1378 mAh g(-1) at 0.2 C, and high reversible capacity of 723 mAh g(-1), and degradation rate of only 0.081% per cycle, after 500 cycles at 0.5 C.