Nitrogen and oxygen dual-doped hollow carbon nanospheres derived from catechol/polyamine as sulfur hosts for advanced lithium sulfur batteries

Although lithium-sulfur batteries are considered as promising high-energy-storage system owing to their high energy density, developing effective materials to host sulfur species on the cathode is still challenging. Herein, an inexpensive and effective carbon precursor, catechol and polyamine is explored to fabricate nitrogen/oxygen dual-doped hollow carbon nanospheres (DHCSs) as sulfur hosts. The group containing nitrogen and oxygen can provide stronger chemisorption for lithium polysulfides than single-doped carbon matrix, which is confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis and the theoretical calculation. As a result, the designed sulfur/DHCSs cathode delivers a stable cycling performance remained 851 mAh g−1 discharge capacity at 0.2 C with ∼0.08% capacity decay per cycle after 200 cycles, revealing its great promise for energy storage application. [Display omitted]