MnO-Inlaid hierarchically porous carbon hybrid for lithium-sulfur batteries

Lithium-sulfur batteries possess great prospects in next-generation energy-storage devices though there are still some tough challenges currently. In this paper, MnO-inlaid hierarchically porous carbon hybrid is prepared by a one-pot solid-state method and followed with annealing treatment. The MnO nanoparticles are synthesized via glucose-derived carbon reduction with salt as the template. The resultant carbon-coated MnO, which owns a hierarchical porous structure, benefits to alleviate the shuttle effect of lithium-sulfur battery and immobilize the soluble polysulfide to improve the electrochemical performance by both physical limitation and chemisorption. As a result, the cathode MnO-PC/S reveals a high initial discharge capacity of 1384 mAh g(-1) at 0.2 C and a high retention capacity of 593 mAh g(-1) over 200 cycles.