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Effect of phosphorous-doped graphitic carbon nitride on electrochemical properties of lithium-sulfur battery

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Abstract

Various sulfur host materials have been developed to improve the performance of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery. In this work, we used phosphorus-doped graphitic carbon nitride (xP-g-C3N4) as a sulfur host material for the first time. xP-g-C3N4 was prepared with dicyandiamide as the precursor and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazole hexafluorophosphate as a phosphorus source. The effect of phosphorus doping on the electrochemical properties of xP-g-C3N4/S as cathode material for the Li-S battery was studied. The results show that decreasing lattice spacing improves the conductivity by doping phosphorus, and the specific surface area of 0.1P-g-C3N4 reaches 19.66 m2 g−1, which is about two times higher than that of g-C3N4. 0.1P-g-C3N4/S has 1344 mAh g−1 for the initial discharge specific capacity and 882 mAh g−1 for reversible specific capacity after 100 cycles with a capacity decay of 0.34% per cycle, exhibiting outstanding cycling performance and rate performance. Phosphorus-doped materials have a high specific capacity due to their own stronger physical adsorption and chemisorption of polysulfides and higher conductivity. This doping strategy proposed a new and efficient pathway for the fabrication of high-performance sulfur electrodes for Li-S batteries.

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Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Nos. 51274119 and 51774175 and the Scientific Research Fund of Liaoning Provincial Education Department under Grant L2019lkyqn-03.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Mining, Liaoning Technical University, No. 47, Zhonghua Road, Fuxin, 123000, Liaoning Province, China

    Xu Zhang

  2. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Liaoning Technical University, No. 47, Zhonghua Road, Fuxin, 123000, Liaoning Province, China

    Shaobin Yang, Yuehui Chen, Shuwei Tang, Ding Shen, Wei Dong & Dongyang Hao

  3. School of Metallurgy Engineering, Liaoning Institute of Science and Technology, No. 176, Xiangyu Road, Benxi, 117004, Liaoning Province, China

    Sinan Li

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  1. Xu Zhang
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Zhang, X., Yang, S., Chen, Y. et al. Effect of phosphorous-doped graphitic carbon nitride on electrochemical properties of lithium-sulfur battery. Ionics 26, 5491–5501 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11581-020-03728-w

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