Dense-Stacking Porous Conjugated Polymer as Reactive-Type Host for High-Performance Lithium Sulfur Batteries.
Commercialization of the lithium-sulfur battery is hampered by bottlenecks like low sulfur loading, high cathode porosity, uncontrollable Li2 Sx deposition and sluggish kinetics of Li2 S activation. Herein, we developed a densely stacked redox-active hexaazatrinaphthylene (HATN) polymer with a surface area of 302 m2  g-1 and a very high bulk density of ca. 1.60 g cm-3 . Uniquely, HATN polymer has a similar redox potential window to S, which facilitates the binding of Li2 Sx and its transformation chemistry within the bulky polymer host, leading to fast Li2 S/S kinetics. The compact polymer/S electrode presents a high sulfur loading of ca. 15 mgs  cm-2 (200-μm thickness) with a low cathode porosity of 41 %. It delivers a high areal capacity of ca. 14 mAh cm-2 and good cycling stability (200 cycles) at electrolyte-sulfur (E/S) ratio of 5 μL mgs -1 . The assembled pouch cell delivers a cell-level high energy density of 303 Wh kg-1 and 392 Wh L-1 .
['Wang|Xiaowei|X|http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7542-6108', 'Yang|Yangyuchen|Y|', 'Lai|Chen|C|', 'Li|Runlai|R|', 'Xu|Haomin|H|', 'Tan|Darren H S|DHS|', 'Zhang|Kun|K|', 'Yu|Wei|W|', 'Fjeldberg|Oeystein|O|', 'Lin|Ming|M|', 'Tang|Wei|W|', 'Meng|Ying Shirley|YS|', 'Loh|Kian Ping|KP|http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1491-743X']
dense stacking high areal capacity bulky host high practical energy density redox-induced polysulfide deposition