Efficient Polysulfide Trapping and Conversion on N‐Doped CoTe<sub>2</sub> via Enhanced Dual‐Anchoring Effect
Xue‐Qin Song, Da Tian, Yue Qiu, Xun Sun, Bo Jiang, Chenghao Zhao, Yu Zhang, Xianzhu Xu, Lishuang Fan, Naiqing Zhang
Abstract
Abstract Polysulfide shuttling and sluggish sulfur redox kinetics hinder the cyclability and rate capability of lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries. The intrinsic redox kinetics of sulfur cathodes strongly depends on the interaction between catalysts and sulfur species. Herein, N‐doped CoTe 2 is proposed as an effective dual‐anchoring electrocatalyst, which can simultaneously bind Li and S atoms in lithium polysulfides via ionic Te–Li/N–Li bonding and coordinate covalent Co–S bonding. The incorporated N not only serves as enhanced lithiophilic site, but also an agent to improve the sulfiphilicity of the Co site as revealed by a series of experimental and computational results. Benefiting from these superiorities, the use of N‐doped CoTe 2 as a catalytic interlayer enables efficient operation of Li–S batteries in terms of impressive rate capability of 758 mAh g −1 at 4 C and very low capacity decay of 0.021% per cycle over 1000 cycles. The material and strategy demonstrated in this work may open the door toward developing more advanced Li–S electrocatalysts.