From purple sweet potato to sustainable lithium-sulfur batteries

摘要

Owing to the intrinsic structural characteristics and natural renewability, biomass materials have been more and more employed as an attractive component of electrode in energy storage devices. Among them, lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are long suffering from several obstacles relating to the sulfur cathode, and biomass-derived carbon could be a cost-effective and fruitful settlement. Therefore, in this work, purple sweet potato is taken as the carbon source. The activation process using KOH and Zn(OAC)(2).2H(2)O are investigated, which provide the resultant carbon material a rich pore structure and a large surface area. After further assembled into a Li-S battery cathode with sulfur infiltration, a high discharge capacity of 1390 mA h g(-1) is acquired. The battery also demonstrates excellent rate performance and cycling stability, as well as the environment friendliness due to the application of the sustainable biomass precursors.

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