A spongy mesoporous titanium nitride material as sulfur host for high performance lithium-sulfur batteries

Lithium/sulfur (Li/S) batteries have attracted great attention due to high theoretical capacity, rich resources and environmental friendliness. However, the shuttle effect and slow redox reactions deteriorate the electrochemical performance and hinder their practical application. Herein, a spongy mesoporous titanium nitride (SMT) material is synthesized via a simple approach and used as an effective sulfur host. Consequently, the S/SMT electrode, with 70 wt% sulfur content, exhibits high initial capacity (1312 mA h g⁻¹ at 0.1C), excellent rate capability (620 mA h g⁻¹ at 2.0C) and low capacity decay rate (0.058% and 0.048% per cycle at 1.0C and 2.0C, respectively). Moreover, with a high areal sulfur loading of 3.0 mg cm⁻², the cathode still achieves an ultrahigh capacity of 665 mA h g⁻¹ at 0.1C.