PTFE nanofiber cross-linked acetylene black: A flexible self-supporting semi-confined architecture for ultra-high sulfur loading and areal capacity

Lithium-sulfur batteries attract great interest due to their high energy density, sulfur abundance and environment friendly. However, the shuttle effect of lithium polysulfide and serious capacity fading especially at high sulfur loading remains a challenge for their commercial applications. In this work, we propose a scalable and feasible strategy to construct a flexible host for sulfur and catalyst carrier, in which polytetrafluoroethylene is employed as a precursor and in-situ polymerized into nanofibers to link acetylene black (PTFE NF/AB) through a blend and low temperature (∼ 180 °C) treatment process. The PTFE NF/AB exhibits semi-confined architecture for sulfur accommodation, electrolyte infiltration and electron transformation. Impressively, the electrode achieves a high areal capacity of 14.6 mAh cm−2 at the current density of 4.82 mA cm−2 with a sulfur loading of 20.6 mg cm−2. Moreover, the PTFE NF/AB architecture can be employed as the catalyst supports. The capacity can be further enhanced to 17.4 mAh cm−2 when MoS2 fabricated into the PTFE NF/AB using a ball mill approach. Assembled into a pouch cell, the PTFE NF/AB architecture delivers a high capacity of 825.4 mAh g−1 in the folded state, showing its excellent potential in the high-energy flexible territory.