Corn-silk-based biomass porous carbon as a sulfur host for promising lithium-sulfur batteries

The effect of shuttle in lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries is a serious impediment to battery properties and commercialization. In this paper, biomass porous carbon materials were obtained via a one-step pyrolysis approach, and the overall carbon material structure was modified by controlling mass proportion of activator to carbon precursor. Physical and electrochemical analysis and testing techniques showed that the biomass porous carbon with a mass ratio of 1.5 showed the best advantage in inhibiting the shuttle effect and optimizing the cell behavior. The pore rich structure and the highest degree of graphitization not only provide strong adsorption storage capacity for controlling the polysulfide shuttle effect, but also provide fast channels to fast transfer in Li-ion and electron. Therefore, the prepared Li-S battery has shown an effective initial discharge of 1118.1 mAh g^-1 specific capacity at 0.1 C with a minimum decay rate of 0.065% of capacity at 1 C per cycle. This work shows the potential application of biomass porous carbon materials for Li-S batteries.