Efficient Polysulfide Trapping and Conversion on N-Doped CoTe via Enhanced Dual-Anchoring Effect.

Polysulfide shuttling and sluggish sulfur redox kinetics hinder the cyclability and rate capability of lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries. The intrinsic redox kinetics of sulfur cathodes strongly depends on the interaction between catalysts and sulfur species. Herein, N-doped CoTe is proposed as an effective dual-anchoring electrocatalyst, which can simultaneously bind Li and S atoms in lithium polysulfides via ionic Te-Li/N-Li bonding and coordinate covalent Co-S bonding. The incorporated N not only serves as enhanced lithiophilic site, but also an agent to improve the sulfiphilicity of the Co site as revealed by a series of experimental and computational results. Benefiting from these superiorities, the use of N-doped CoTe as a catalytic interlayer enables efficient operation of Li-S batteries in terms of impressive rate capability of 758 mAh g at 4 C and very low capacity decay of 0.021% per cycle over 1000 cycles. The material and strategy demonstrated in this work may open the door toward developing more advanced Li-S electrocatalysts.