LAUSR

Abstract Lithium-sulfur battery is an attractive energy storage system owing to its high theoretical capacity. However, the insulating nature of sulfur and “shuttle effect” of intermediate lithium polysulfides hinders its practical utilization. Herein, we demonstrate a facile dip-coating process to construct coaxial-cable carbon structure directly on the fibers of textile as sulfur host. Specifically, textile is dip-coated in the suspension of CNTs, CNT/sulfur hybrid and graphene in sequence. After drying, three corresponding layers are spontaneously formed on the fibers of the textiles due to Van der Waals force. The composite cathode delivers a reversible discharge capacity as high as 913.0 mA h g−1 at 0.5 C and excellent cycling stability with a retention rate of 88% after 200 cycles with a sulfur loading of 3 mg cm−2. The excellent performance is ascribed to the high absorption capability of polysulfides in the hierarchical porous structures, excellent conductivity of CNT, and effective shuttle suppression of polysulfides by graphene sheet. The process reported in this work can provide a new way to synthesize flexible and robust sulfur cathode for Li S battery application.