Ameliorating the Energy Storage Performance of Lithium–Sulfur Batteries via Sulfur-Intercalated Titanium Carbide (Ti<sub>3</sub>C<sub>2</sub>T<i><sub>x</sub></i>) MXene
Soorya Srinivasan, M. Jothibas, Noel Nesakumar
Abstract
Theoretically, batteries based on lithium–sulfur have a high energy density. However, involuntary dendritic growth at the anode and poor high-loading performance at the cathode have plagued the practical implementation of Li–S batteries. However, capacity fading occurs due to the lithium polysulfide shuttle effect, while its redox nature should also be improved. Therefore, titanium carbide MXene (Ti3C2Tx MXene) with a layered-stacked structure is used as an ideal host material for the sulfur cathode, with the sulfur content affecting the electrochemical performance of the composites consisting of sulfur nanoparticles and Ti3C2Tx MXene. When the reactant has a 1:4 MXene-to-sulfur mass ratio, it gorges the layered-stacked structure equally. Additionally, the surface terminal groups exhibit a high degree of LiPSn adsorption. As a result, the S@MXene composite (68 wt %) demonstrated a superior cycling performance of 1034 mAh g–1 even after 100 cycles and an initial reversible capacity of 1231 mAh g–1 at 0.5C, respectively. This study establishes a platform for developing improved cathode materials based on sulfur for lithium–sulfur batteries.