A facile and effective sulfur loading method: Direct drop of liquid Li2S8 on carbon coated TiO2 nanowire arrays as cathode towards commercializing lithium-sulfur battery

The development of high performance lithium-sulfur batteries is trapped by the shuttle effect of intermediate polysulfides and the insulating nature of sulfur. To overcome these drawbacks, numerous state-of-the-art encapsulation/wrap of sulfur strategies have been developed. However, most of these methods have challenges to implement in commercializing applications of lithium-sulfur batteries. Herein, a facile and effective sulfur loading method is presented by droping liquid Li2S8 into carbon coated TiO2 nanowire arrays without any complex pre-processing. As a result, these electrodes with 2.0 and 4.0 mg/cm2 sulfur have high initial capacities of 1280 and 1240 mAh/g, and maintain 930 and 680 mAh/g after 500 cycles under 3.2 mA, respectively. For a quick-acting cycling, it holds 520 mAh/g after 500 cycles at 5.8 mA with 4.0 mg/cm2 sulfur loading. The facile sulfur loading approach may provide a new opportunity to construct high performance sulfur-based cathodes for their industrial applications.