(301f) Titanium Nitride Nanotube As Effective Cathode Materials for Lithium Sulfur Batteries

Electrical energy storage has already become one of the most significant research areas of society nowadays. However, the performance of current lithium-ion batteries is not capable of meeting tomorrow's energy storage requirements for advanced transportation, portable, and residential applications. So, in order to overcome the obstacle that the obtainable specific capacities of current positive electrode materials remain insufficient to meet the ever-increasing requirements of the rapidly progressing emerging technologies, novel electrode materials, such as sulfur and corresponding electrochemistry are urgently needed to be discovered and studied, although there are several unsolved issues.

Our recent study on highly structured TiN as a novel and effective cathode material for Li-S battery, revealed that its several advantages over previous research. In our research, titanium nitride nanotube array is synthesized through anodization growth method and utilized as a cathode additive for a Li-S battery. TiN enhanced Li-S battery performance by improving the current collecting capability on cathode, and decreasing the impedance increase and redox shuttle reaction over cycles. Moreover, the effect of nanotube diameter and length on Li-S battery cell capacity performance and retention were investigated. Electrochemical performance and the corresponding material characterization of this new cathode material for the lithium sulfur battery electrochemical reactions was studied by AC impedance spectroscopy, SEM and BET surface area measurement. The results may be of great significance to electrode material design for more efficient Li/S batteries.