Bioinspired urchin-like murray carbon nanostructure with protection shell for advanced lithium-sulfur batteries

Commercial application of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries is hindered by the insulating nature of sulfur and the dissolution of polysulfides. Here, a bioinspired 3D urchin-like N-doped Murray's carbon nanos-tructure (N-MCN) with interconnected micro-meso-macroporous structure and a polydopamine protec-tion shell has been designed as an effective sulfur host for high-performance Li-S batteries. The advanced 3D hierarchically porous framework with the characteristics of the generalized Murray's law largely improves electrolyte diffusion, facilitates electrons/ions transfer and provides strong chemisorption for active species, leading to the synergistic structural and chemical confinement of polysulfides. As a result, the obtained P@S/N-MCN electrode with high areal sulfur loading demonstrates high capacity at high current densities after long cycles. This work reveals that following the generalized Murray's law is fea-sible to design high-performance sulfur cathode materials for potentially practical Li-S battery applications.& COPY; 2023 Science Press and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. and Science Press. All rights reserved.