Catalyst–sulfur bidirectional stimulation to accelerate redox kinetics for high-performance cryogenic lithium-sulfur batteries

Abstract

The development of cryogenic lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) suffers from the sluggish reaction kinetics and the shuttle effect of polysulfide. In order to accelerate the redox process and improve the utilization rate of elemental sulfur at the low temperature, we first propose catalyst–sulfur bidirectional stimulation to accelerate redox kinetics for high-performance cryogenic LSBs. Theoretical calculation and experimental results suggest that the selenium-doped MoS2 (SeDMoS2) catalyst can not only effectively capture and anchor polysulfide but also can interact with the sulfur species to stimulate each other, thus boosting the low-temperature kinetics and optimizing the cryogenic capacity. Quite impressively, with the assistance of the bidirectional stimulation between the SeDMoS2 catalyst and sulfur, the LSB can deliver a high initial capacity of 732 mAh g−1, and only ∼0.3% of the capacity is attenuated per cycle during 100 cycles at the low temperature of −40 °C. This strategy throws light on the further development of high-capacity cryogenic LSBs and points the way to explore other low-temperature metal batteries.