Lithium Sulfide (Li2S)/Graphene Oxide Nanospheres with Conformal Carbon Coating as a High-Rate, Long-Life Cathode for Li/S Cells

In recent years, lithium/sulfur (Li/S) cells have attracted great attention as a candidate for the next generation of rechargeable batteries due to their high theoretical specific energy of 2600 W·h kg–1, which is much higher than that of Li ion cells (400–600 W·h kg–1). However, problems of the S cathode such as highly soluble intermediate species (polysulfides Li2S n , n = 4–8) and the insulating nature of S cause poor cycle life and low utilization of S, which prevents the practical use of Li/S cells. Here, a high-rate and long-life Li/S cell is proposed, which has a cathode material with a core–shell nanostructure comprising Li2S nanospheres with an embedded graphene oxide (GO) sheet as a core material and a conformal carbon layer as a shell. The conformal carbon coating is easily obtained by a unique CVD coating process using a lab-designed rotating furnace without any repetitive steps. The Li2S/GO@C cathode exhibits a high initial discharge capacity of 650 mA·h g–1 of Li2S (corresponding to the 942 mA·h g–1 of S) and very low capacity decay rate of only 0.046% per cycle with a high Coulombic efficiency of up to 99.7% for 1500 cycles when cycled at the 2 C discharge rate.