Enhanced Multiple Anchoring and Catalytic Conversion of Polysulfides by Amorphous MoS₃ Nanoboxes for High-Performance Li-S Batteries

The practical implementation of lithium–sulfur batteries is obstructed by poor conductivity, sluggish redox kinetics, the shuttle effect, large volume variation, and low areal loading of sulfur electrodes. Now, amorphous N-doped carbon/MoS₃ (NC/MoS₃) nanoboxes with hollow porous architectures have been meticulously designed as an advanced sulfur host. Benefiting from the enhanced conductivity by the N-doped carbon, reduced shuttle effect by the strong chemical interaction between unsaturated Mo and lithium polysulfides, improved redox reaction kinetics by the catalytic effect of MoS₃, great tolerance of volume variation and high sulfur loading arising from flexible amorphous materials with hollow-porous structures, the amorphous NC/MoS₃ nanoboxes enabled sulfur electrodes to deliver a high areal capacity with superior rate capacity and decent cycling stability. The synthetic strategy can be generalized to fabricate other amorphous metal sulfide nanoboxes.