Egg white derived carbon materials as an efficient sulfur host for high-performance lithium-sulfur batteries and its electrochemical properties

Abstract

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are attractive and prominent power sources due to high theoretical capacity and the availability of sulfur at a low price. However, sulfur has limitations such as the formation of polysulfides and low conductivity. To overcome these problems, we prepared a cheese-like carbon (CLC) using a simple annealing process from an egg white. The as-prepared carbon material contains NaCl and KCl compounds. The CLC with nanoholes were formed after cleaning with distilled water and ethanol several times. The prepared CLC had a strong polysulfide capturing ability, high conductivity, a large surface area, and high catalytic activity. To prepare the CLC/S composite, sulfur was added by the melt diffusion method. CLC/S cathode material exhibited a high initial capacity of nearly 1420 mA h g(-1) at 0.1 C and excellent rate capability with a low capacity-fading rate. The present work revealed that CLC/S cathodes are potential candidate cathodes for Li-S batteries.