A light-weight free-standing graphene foam-based interlayer towards improved Li-S cells

Yi, R, Liu, C, Zhao, Y, Hardwick, LJ ORCID: 0000-0001-8796-685X, Li, Y, Geng, X, Zhang, Q, Yang, L and Zhao, C (2019) A light-weight free-standing graphene foam-based interlayer towards improved Li-S cells. Electrochimica Acta, 299. pp. 479-488.

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Abstract

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd A light-weight and free-standing graphene foam interlayer placed between sulfur cathode and separator is investigated to improve the electrochemical performance of lithium-sulfur batteries. The highly conductive and light-weight porous graphene foam not only increases the electron pathway of cathode, but also adsorbs the dissolved high-order lithium polysulfides during cycles, thus the loss of active materials is greatly avoided with only minimum mass addition approximately 0.3 mg cm−2 on cathodic side. Additionally, the atomic layer deposition method is applied to deposit the zinc oxide nano-scale coating on graphene foam interlayer in order to chemically trap the polysulfides with minimized deterioration on conductivity of graphene foam. Among all the graphene foam, graphene foam@zinc oxide and graphene foam/graphene foam@zinc oxide interlayers, the graphene foam/graphene foam@zinc oxide exhibits the best electrochemical performance, delivering an initial specific capacity of 1051 mAh g−1 at 0.5 C and retaining a reversible capacity of 672 mAh g−1 after 100 cycles, while the cell without interlayer only shows 346 mAh g−1. These results demonstrate the strategy of including a zinc oxide modified graphene foam interlayer as an effective light-weight interlayer for improving Li-S cell performance.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Li-S battery, Graphene foam, Interlayer, Atomic layer deposition, ZnO
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	31 Jan 2019 12:00
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 01:05
DOI:	10.1016/j.electacta.2019.01.015
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3031943