Se with Se-C bonds encapsulated in a honeycomb 3D porous carbon as an excellent performance cathode for Li-Se batteries

Li-Se batteries have risen to prominence as promising lithium-ion batteries thanks to their ultrahigh volumetric energy density and the high electrical conductivity of Se. However, the use of Li-Se batteries is limited not only by the large volume expansion and dissolution of polyselenides in the cathodes during cycling, but also the low selenium loading. A highly effective and currently feasible approach to simultaneously tackle these problems is to position the selenium in a carbon matrix with a sufficient pore volume to accommodate the expansion while increasing the interfacial interaction between the selenium and carbon. We have synthesized a novel cathode material (Se@HPC) for Li-Se batteries of a honeycomb 3D porous carbon derived from a tartrate salt, that was impregnated with Se to produce Se-C bonds. The pore volume of the honeycomb 3D porous carbon was as high as 1.794 cm3 g−1, which allowed 65 wt% selenium to be uniformly encapsulated. Moreover, the strong chemical bonds between selenium and carbon stabilize the selenium, thus inhibiting its huge volume expansion and the dissolution of polyselenides, and promoting charge transfer during cycling. As expected, a Se@HCP cathode has excellent cyclability and a good rate performance. After 200 cycles at 0.2 C, its specific capacity remains at 561 mA h g−1, 83% of the theoretical value, and decays by only 0.058% per cycle. It also has a large capacity of 472.8 mA h g−1 under a high current density of 5 C.