2026-10-12T18:30:26Z https://www.scidb.cn/oai

10.57760/sciencedb.j00125.00230 2026-07-30T16:37:18Z

2026-07-30 Electron-injection-induced tensile lattice strain in hierarchically porous Ni@O-doped carbon nanocage/CNTs sponge for enhanced electrocatalytic reduction of Li2S2 to Li2S doi:10.57760/sciencedb.j00125.00230 en The commercialization of lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) is hindered by their sluggish solid-solid conversion kinetics, particularly the reduction process from Li2S2 to Li2S, which is a key bottleneck leading to capacity decay and poor rate performance. In this work, a porous structure of oxygen-doped carbon nanotube sponge (OCNTS) uniformly loaded with Ni@oxygen-doped carbon nanocage (Ni@OCN) was innovatively designed and constructed. The unique “Ni-in-cage” structure encapsulates highly catalytically active Ni nanoparticles (Ni NPs) within the OCN, while the three-dimensional interconnected OCNTS forms a highly conductive framework. Physical characterization and kinetic parameters confirmed that the strong electronic interaction between the Ni NPs and the OCN matrix induces a slight lattice expansion in Ni, creating an active center under the strain state. This effectively reduces the energy barrier for the Li2S2 → Li2S conversion, with an apparent activation energy of 24.69 kJ mol-1 for the reduction reaction on Ni@OCN, which is 39.97 kJ mol-1 lower than that of pure carbon. Benefiting from this kinetic acceleration mechanism, the cell assembled with Ni@OCN/OCNTS delivers a high initial specific capacity of 1574.6 mAh g-1 at 0.2 C. Even under a sulfur loading of 3.9 mg cm-2 and a high rate of 1 C, an initial specific capacity of 812 mAh g-1 can still be achieved. This work elucidates the synergistic catalytic mechanism between transition metal nanoparticles and heteroatom-doped carbon carriers from the perspective of “lattice strain catalysis”, providing a new theoretical basis and material paradigm for designing high-performance catalysts for practical lithium-sulfur batteries. Lithium-sulfur batteries; Ni@oxygen-doped carbon nanocages; Carbon nanotube sponge; lattice strain catalysis; Li2S2 reduction kinetics liu xiao xiao Liu Panpan Zheng Yu Zhang Ying Liang Chenxi Zhou Xianxian Liu Shibin PUBLIC https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ dataset Science Data Bank