Multifunctional Sulfur-Mediated Strategy Enabling Fast-Charging Sb2S3 Micro-Package Anode for Lithium-Ion Storage

Rate-limited formation of low-stage intercalation and lithium precipitation at high C-rate severely limited the application of graphite anode for fast-charging lithium ion batteries (LIBs). Exploration of new-type fast-charging anodes is promising and urgent. Herein, a high-rate Sb2S3-based micro-package anode composed of Sb2S3 particles encapsulated into S-doped expanded graphite (Sb2S3@EG’-S) is developed by a scalable sulfur-mediated route. The sulfur used here is multifunctional, which can not only act as sulfur sources for sulfurization and S-doping, but also assist to exfoliate the expanded graphite and encapsulate the in-situ transformed Sb2S3 particles. It is demonstrated that the above sulfur-mediated strategy promotes the formation of packaging structured composite with average size of 9-15 um and low BET specific surface area, exhibits high initial coulombic efficiency of 86.7%. Moreover, the advantages of well-distributed Sb2S3 particles into the package, high conductivity, and reversibility endow the composite anode with fast-charging lithium storage capacity in both half and full LIBs. Very importantly, the capacity can be maintained at 548 mAh g-1 at 5 A g-1 over 100 cycles for half-cell, and 71.3% at 4 C rate for full-cell LIBs with NCM333 as cathode.