Reduced graphene oxide-hollow carbon sphere nanostructure cathode material with ultra-high sulfur content for high performance lithium-sulfur batteries

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries have been regarded as promising next generation rechargeable energy storage system, due to the high theoretical specific capacity and energy density. However, the low sulfur content in the cathode electrode greatly decrease the practical energy density of the Li-S batteries. Herein, we report a reduced graphene oxide-hollow carbon sphere (rGO-HCS) composite to encapsulate sulfur with high sulfur contents from 70 to 90wt% as sulfur cathode. The rGO-HCS/S composite loading 90wt% sulfur delivers the highest energy density of 1281Whkg⿿1 based on the mass of the whole cathode, even at a high sulfur areal density of 3mgcm⿿2, it could still reach a high discharge capacity of 860mAhg⿿1 (corresponding to 1300Whkg⿿1 based on mass of the whole cathode) and obtain a high capacity retention of 77% after 78 cycles.These results indicate the great potential of the rGO-HCS nanostructure as promising sulfur host loading high content of sulfur with high gravimetric and volumetric energy density.