Issue 4, 2022

Tuning the morphology of sulfur–few layer graphene composites via liquid phase evaporation for battery application

Abstract

A comparative study on sulfur-based composite electrodes comprising different few-layer graphene contents prepared via a facile evaporation method is presented here. The active material production process employed here, exploring different sulfur–few layer graphene ratios, enabled tuning and optimization of the sample morphology, as confirmed via a scanning electron microscopy study. The results reveal that the graphene content is a crucial parameter yielding an optimized morphology of spherical particles composed of an elemental sulfur inner core covered by the carbonaceous compound. The electrodes are characterized in lithium metal half-cells in terms of cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic cycling tests, rate capability and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Moreover, the lithium-ion diffusion coefficients of each sample are obtained by the Randles–Sevcik equation in order to evaluate the reliability of the electrochemical processes. The lithium metal half-cell with the sulfur carbon composite active material exploiting a spherical particle morphology delivers a high specific capacity of 950 mA h g−1 after 100 cycles at C/4 with a coulombic efficiency of 98%. An optimized sample, tuned in terms of sulfur content and morphology, shows superior performance, exhibiting capacities of 1128 mA h g−1 and 842 mA h g−1 over 80 cycles at C/4 and 2C, respectively.

Graphical abstract: Tuning the morphology of sulfur–few layer graphene composites via liquid phase evaporation for battery application

Associated articles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
08 Oct 2021
Accepted
31 Dec 2021
First published
13 Jan 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY license

Nanoscale Adv., 2022,4, 1136-1144

Tuning the morphology of sulfur–few layer graphene composites via liquid phase evaporation for battery application

E. Venezia, L. Carbone, F. Bonaccorso and V. Pellegrini, Nanoscale Adv., 2022, 4, 1136 DOI: 10.1039/D1NA00733E

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