Preparation Of Neodymium And Zinc Doped Carbon Aerogel Based Sulfur Electrode And Its Electrochemical Performance

Lithium-sulfur batteries are considered as promising energy storage devices with the high theoretical capacity and energy density.However,the applications of lithium-sulfur batteries has been hampered by the rapid capacity decay deteriorated polysulfide shuttle causing rapid capacity fade and short cycle life for shuttle effect.Therefore,looking for a kind of suitable fixed sulfur material that can effectively inhibit the shuttle effect of lithium-sulfur batteries and extend the cycle life of lithium-sulfur batteries,has aroused widespread concern and research.The carbon aerogel?CA?uniformly doped neodymium oxide?Nd2O3?nanoparticle was synthesized by an effective in-situ method via acid catalyzing and used as the cathode matrix for lithium-sulfur batteries.The doped materials with interconnected pore structure of CA and evenly dispersed Nd2O3 offer crucial confinement role to anchor sulfur and suppress the loss of polysulfide ions for interrelate function of S/polysulfides by Nd2O3.The composited sulfur electrodes present high electrochemical performances and initial discharge capacities,especially,the Nd2-CA/S sample gains initial discharge capacity of 1327 mAh g^-1 at 0.2 C and remains at 1082 mAh g^-1 after 100 cycles.Meanwhile,it still remains capacity of about 907 mAh g^-1 at 0.5 C after 300 cycles.The enhanced electrochemical performances can be ascribed to the crosslink mesoporous CA materials and well distributed neodymium oxide.Furthermore,the metal additive also takes promoting effect on redox reactions of the Li/S batteries presenting higher discharge voltages.Moreover,we report a carbon aerogel decorated with zinc sulfide via a simple in-situ method as a cathode matrix for lithium sulfur batteries.The nanopore ZnS-CA composites with the rich mesoporous structure and high specific surface area performed excellent electrochemical performances.For instance,the 6ZnS-CA/S sample achieves an initial capacity of 1352 mAh g^-1 at 0.2 C and maintains a high capacity of 1109 mAh g^-1 after 100 cycles.Furthermore,after 200 long cycles,it still maintains a high capacity of 749 mAh g^-1 at 1 C.These excellent performance is attributed to the ZnS nanoparticles strong affinity for Li2Sx species,and thus effectively inhibiting the polysulfide shuttle.Meanwhile,the ZnS nanoparticles on the carbon materials also have catalytic effect on sulfur reduction.