Free-standing sulfur cathodes composited with carbon nanorods arrays for Li-S batteries application

Abstract Sulfur is an attractive active material for lithium batteries in terms of its high specific capacity and energy density. Despite main advantages, lithium sulfur (Li-S) batteries still suffer from great challenges with serious capacity decay and awful rate performance due to severe ⿿shuttle effect⿿ and mass loss of active materials. Herein we report a free-standing carbon-sulfur cathodes by anchoring sulfur into 3D carbon nanorods arrays. Binder-free and integrated characteristics are realized. Sulfur infuses into interspaces among arrays and trapped by the interconnected carbon arrays. The assembled cells exhibit initial discharge specific capacity of 1050 mAh g⿿1 at 0.2 C and 892 mAh g⿿1 at 2.0 C, companied by an outstanding coulombic efficiency of 98% after 200 cycles at 0.2 C. The obtained S-C cathode also shows excellent rate capacity with low capacity fade. The proposed new S-C architecture may pave the way toward construction of novel S-Li batteries.