Natural nori-based porous carbon composite for sustainable lithium-sulfur batteries

The practical applications of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries are limited by the low conductivity of sulfur and the shuttle effect of soluble polysulfides during the charge-discharge process. At the same time, biomass-based carbon materials have been acknowledged as the cost-effective and direct settlement to mitigate or overcome these problems due to their renewability, facile processing, and pollution-free characteristics. Therefore, in this work, we report the natural nori-based CoO nanoparticles decorated hierarchical porous carbon (HPC) for high-capacity Li-S battery cathodes. The HPC with an extremely high surface area of 2089 m2 g−1 provides a good substrate for the accommodation of CoO nanoparticles, which can effectively seize the lithium polysulfides and facilitate their redox conversion. As a result, the CoO-HPC/S cathode exhibits a high discharge capacity of 1557.1 mA h g−1, as well as excellent rate performance and cycling stability. Due to the naturally abundant nori-based cathode materials, the resultant Li-S battery is supposed to be an attractive and sustainable energy storage device.