Nickel-Based-Hydroxide-Wrapped Activated Carbon Cloth/Sulfur Composite with Tree-Bark-Like Structure for High-Performance Freestanding Sulfur Cathode

Abstract

Herein, we designed a simple and energy-saving “ethanol-transfer-adsorption” method to prepare the activated carbon cloth/sulfur composite (ACC/S). Then, the prepared composite was wrapped in a thin-layered nickel-based hydroxide (NNH) to form a tree-bark-like structure. After irreversibly reacting with lithium to form a barrier layer with both good Li+ permeability and abundant functional polar/hydrophilic groups, this layer could retard the diffusion of lithium polysulfides by both physical confinement and chemisorption. As a result, the freestanding NNH/ACC/S cathode with 4.3 mg cm–2 sulfur loading displayed a high-areal discharge capacity of 4.3 mA h cm–2 over 100 cycles at 0.15 C. When cycled at 0.5 C, it still showed a discharge capacity of 650.0 mA h g–1 over 350 cycles.