Aspergillus flavus Conidia-derived Carbon/Sulfur Composite as a Cathode Material for High Performance Lithium–Sulfur Battery

A novel approach was developed to prepare porous carbon materials with an extremely high surface area of 2459.6 m(2)g(−1) by using Aspergillus flavus conidia as precursors. The porous carbon serves as a superior cathode material to anchor sulfur due to its uniform and tortuous morphology, enabling high capacity and good cycle lifetime in lithium sulfur-batteries. Under a current rate of 0.2 C, the carbon-sulfur composites with 56.7 wt% sulfur loading deliver an initial capacity of 1625 mAh g(−1), which is almost equal to the theoretical capacity of sulfur. The good performance may be ascribed to excellent electronic networks constructed by the high-surface-area carbon species. Moreover, the semi-closed architecture of derived carbons can effectively retard the polysulfides dissolution during charge/discharge, resulting in a capacity of 940 mAh g(−1) after 120 charge/discharge cycles.