N‐Doping Induced Lattice Expansion of 1D Template Confined Ultrathin MoS2 Sheets to Significantly Enhance Lithium Polysulfides Redox Kinetics for Li–S Battery

Abstract

AbstractPreparing MoS2‐based materials with reasonable structure and catalytic activity to enhance the sluggish kinetics of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) conversion is of great significance for Li–S batteries (LSBs) but still remain a challenge. Hence, hollow nanotubes composed of N‐doped ultrathin MoS2 nanosheets (N‐MoS2 NHTs) are fabricated as efficient S hosts for LSBs by using CdS nanorods as a sacrifice template. Characterization and theoretical results show that the template effectively inhibits the excessive growth of MoS2 sheets, and N doping expands the interlayer spacing and modulates the electronic structure, thus accelerating the mass/electron transfer and enhancing the LiPSs adsorption and transformation. Benefiting from the merits, the N‐MoS2 NHTs@S cathode exhibits an excellent initial capacity of 887.8 mAh g−1 and stable cycling performances with capacity fading of only 0.0436% per cycle at 1.0 C (500 cycles). Moreover, even at high S loading that of 7.5 mg cm−2, the N‐MoS2 NHTs@S cathode also presents initial excellent areal capacity of 7.80 mAh cm−2 at 0.2 C. This study offers feasible guidance for designing advanced MoS2‐based cathode materials in LSBs.