Three-dimensional sulfur/graphene multifunctional hybrid sponges for lithium-sulfur batteries with large areal mass loading

Abstract

In this communication, we introduce the concept of three dimensional (3D) battery electrodes to enhance the capacity per footprint area for lithium-sulfur battery. In such a battery, 3D electrode of sulfur embedded into porous graphene sponges (S-GS) was directly used as the cathode with large areal mass loading of sulfur (12â €...mg cm â ̂'2), approximately 6-12 times larger than that of most reports. The graphene sponges (GS) worked as a framework that can provide high electronic conductive network, abilities to absorb the polysulfides intermediate, and meanwhile mechanical support to accommodate the volume changes during charge and discharge. As a result, the S-GS electrode with 80 wt.% sulfur can deliver an extremely high areal specific capacitance of 6.0â €...mAh cm â ̂'2 of the 11 th cycle, and maintain 4.2â €...mAh cm â ̂'2 after 300 chargeâ ̂'discharge cycles at a rate of 0.1C, representing an extremely low decay rate (0.08% per cycle after 300 cycles), which could be the highest areal specific capacity with comparable cycle stability among the rechargeable Li/S batteries reported ever.