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

Abstract

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 to investigate the effect of highly electronegative N and −SO3– (N-NGN) in comparison with the −OH, −COOH, and −SO3– groups from a hydroxyl graphene and Nafion composite (N-OHGN) to mitigate PS shuttling in LSBs. The highly conductive doped graphene architecture (N-NGN) provides efficient pathways for both electrons and ions, which accelerates the electrochemical conversion at high sulfur loading. Moreover, the electron-rich pyridine N and −SO3– show strong chemical affinity with the PS through polar–polar interactions, which is proven by the superior electrochemical performance and density functional theory calculations. Further, the N-NGN (5 h) produces a maximum areal capacity of 12.0 and 11.0 mAh cm–2, respectively, at 15 and 12 mg cm–2 sulfur loading. This areal capacity limit is significantly higher than the required areal capacity of LSBs for commercial application, which shows the significant strength of N-NGN as an excellent separator coating for LSBs.