Polypyrrole coated hollow S/Co-doped carbon nanocages excels for packaging high-performance lithium sulfur batteries

Although there are numerous virtues for lithium sulfur batteries, the notorious shuttle effect and insulated nature are impeding their practical application. To address these issues, here we report the design and synthesis of polypyrrole coated sulfur and cobalt co-doped carbon nanocages (PSCC). It demonstrates that both the performance and stability of the PSCC assisted Li-S batteries are improved. The hollow structure of PSCC bypassed the structural collapse effectively caused by volume expansion of sulfur during the reaction and physically suppressed shuttle effect of the intermediate product polysulfide lithium (LiPSs). Also, LiPSs was also trapped to inhibit the shuttle effect due to the strong adsorption of LiPSs via PSCC. In addition, PSCC can also provide an outstanding electronic conductivity, which will facilitate the next-step reaction of the absorbed LiPSs and enhance electrochemical reaction kinetics. Thus, the excellent rate performance was obtained with high specific discharge capacities of 1300 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1 C and 1000 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.5 C. Such packaged high-performance positions our design for the ideal electrochemical energy storage devices. (paper)