Carbon–Tungsten Disulfide Composite Bilayer Separator for High-Performance Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

A bilayer separator based on cost-effective carbon–tungsten disulfide composite and commercial separators is developed in this work. The C-WS2 separator reduces the shuttling effect and increases the cycle life of the battery because of the excellent adsorption capability of polar WS2 to polysulfides. Furthermore, conductive carbon substantially enhances the ionic conductivity of (1 × 10–3 S cm–1). The cell with the C-WS2 separator delivers an excellent discharge capacity of 996 mA h g–1 at 1 C and retained at 416 mA h g–1 after runs over 1000 cycles with a 0.045% capacity decay per cycle. The work provides insights into high-capacity lithium–sulfur batteries with cost-effectiveness.