Exceptional catalytic effects of black phosphorus quantum dots in shuttling-free lithium sulfur batteries

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 9; no. 1; pp. 4164 - 11
• Main Authors: Xu, Zheng-Long, Lin, Shenghuang, Onofrio, Nicolas, Zhou, Limin, Shi, Fangyi, Lu, Wei, Kang, Kisuk, Zhang, Qiang, Lau, Shu Ping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 09-10-2018; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 119/118; 140/133; 147/135; 147/137; 147/143; 639/4077/4079/891; 639/925/357/1017; Anchoring; Batteries; Catalysis; Cathodes; Conversion; Electrocatalysts; Energy storage; Humanities and Social Sciences; Intermediates; Kinetics; Lithium; Lithium sulfur batteries; multidisciplinary; Organic chemistry; Phosphorus; Polysulfides; Quantum dots; Reaction kinetics; Rechargeable batteries; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Storage batteries; Storage systems; Sulfur
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-06629-9

Lithium sulfur batteries with high energy densities are promising next-generation energy storage systems. However, shuttling and sluggish conversion of polysulfides to solid lithium sulfides limit the full utilization of active materials. Physical/chemical confinement is useful for anchoring polysulfides, but not effective for utilizing the blocked intermediates. Here, we employ black phosphorus quantum dots as electrocatalysts to overcome these issues. Both the experimental and theoretical results reveal that black phosphorus quantum dots effectively adsorb and catalyze polysulfide conversion. The activity is attributed to the numerous catalytically active sites on the edges of the quantum dots. In the presence of a small amount of black phosphorus quantum dots, the porous carbon/sulfur cathodes exhibit rapid reaction kinetics and no shuttling of polysulfides, enabling a low capacity fading rate (0.027% per cycle over 1000 cycles) and high areal capacities. Our findings demonstrate application of a metal-free quantum dot catalyst for high energy rechargeable batteries.
Lithium sulfur batteries are promising for next-generation energy storage, but are hindered by polysulfide shuttle effects. Here the authors use black phosphorus quantum dots to adsorb and catalyze the conversion of lithium polysulfides to lithium sulfide, achieving low capacity fade and high sulfur loading.