Porous Carbon Textile Decorated with VC/V2O3-X Hybrid Nanoparticles: Dual-Functional Host for Flexible Li-S Full Batteries

Abstract

The polysulfide shuttling at the cathode and lithium dendrite formation at the anode remain as major obstacles to overcome for the realization of high-performance lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. Here, via a facile one-pot synthesis using carbothermic reduction, we prepared a porous and flexible carbon textile uniformly decorated with VC/V2O3-x hybrid nanoparticles, which was used as a robust and flexible host material for both sulfur cathode and Li metal anode. We observed that the defective V2O3-x part traps polysulfides and the conductive VC part catalytically enhances the fragmentation of the polysulfides. Moreover, it was found that the well-distributed VC/V2O3-x nanoparticles act as lithiophilic sites to lead uniform lithium nucleation for a dendrite-free lithium metal anode. The full battery delivered superb rate performance (882 mAh g − 1 at 5 C) and an ultralow decay rate of 0.02% per cycle during 1000 cycles at 1 C. Even with a large sulfur loading of 7.0 mg cm−2, a high areal capacity of 6.29 mAh cm−2 at 0.2 C was obtained. This work provides an effective remedy to simultaneously resolve problems regarding the shuttle effect and the Li dendrite formation for the realization of high-performance flexible Li-S full batteries.