Dual-Functional Graphene Carbon as Polysulfide Trapper for High-Performance Lithium Sulfur Batteries

The lithium sulfur (Li–S) battery has attracted much attention due to its high theoretical capacity and energy density. However, its cycling stability and rate performance urgently need to improve because of its shuttle effect. Herein, oxygen-doped carbon on the surface of reduced graphene oxide (labeled as ODC/rGO) was fabricated to modify the separators of Li–S batteries to limit the dissolution of the lithium polysulfides. The mesoporous structure in ODC/rGO can not only serve as the physical trapper, but also provide abundant channels for fast ion transfer, which is beneficial for effective confinement of the dissoluble intermediates and superior rate performance. Moreover, the oxygen-containing groups in ODC/rGO are able to act as chemical adsorption sites to immobilize the lithium polysulfides, suppressing their dissolution in electrolyte to enhance the utilization of sulfur cathode in Li–S batteries. As a result, because of the synergetic effects of physical adsorption and chemical interaction to immobilize the soluble polysulfides, the Li–S batteries with the ODC/rGO-coated separator exhibit excellent rate performance and good long-term cycling stability with 0.057% capacity decay per cycle at 1.0 C after 600 cycles.