A novel Zr-MOF-based and polyaniline-coated UIO-67@Se@PANI composite cathode for lithium–selenium batteries

Abstract

In this work, we synthesized a novel UIO-67@Se@PANI composite cathode material for Li–Se battery applications. Zr-MOFs (metal organic frameworks) were used as a support and a PANI (polyaniline) layer was employed as the coating. UIO-67@Se@PANI was expected to be one of the candidates for Li–Se batteries, with a high specific capacity of 248.3 mA h g⁻¹ at 1C (1C = 675 mA g⁻¹) after 100 cycles. In particular, stable capacities of 203.1 and 167.6 mA h g⁻¹ were received after 100 cycles at high rates of 2C and 5C, respectively. To explain such a good electrochemistry performance of the composite cathode material, multiple characterization methods were carried out. And that can be attributed to the sandwich-like structure of the UIO-67@Se@PANI composite and the fact that UIO-67 can provide unsaturated sites to tether the selenium effectively and the PANI layer can improve the electronic conductivity of the whole electrode significantly.