Durable polydopamine-coated porous sulfur core–shell cathode for high performance lithium–sulfur batteries

•PDA-coated porous sulfur core–shell nanocomposites were prepared.•The composites exhibit excellent rate and cycle performance.•The DFT calculation and XPS spectra show strong interactions between Li2Sx and PDA.

Lithium-sulfur batteries show fascinating potential for advanced energy system due to their high specific capacity, low-cost, and environmental benignity. However, their wide applications have been plagued by low coulombic efficiency, fast capacity fading and poor rate performance. Herein, a facile method for preparation of S@PDA (PDA = polydopamine) composites with core–shell structure and good electrochemical performance as well as the First-Principles calculations on the interactions of PDA and polysulfides are reported. Taking the advantages of the core–shell structure with porous sulfur core, the high mechanical flexibility of PDA for accommodating the volumetric variation during the discharge/charge processes, the good lithium ion conductivity and the strong chemical interactions between the nitrogen/oxygen atoms with lone electron pair and lithium polysulfides for alleviating their dissolution, the S@PDA composites exhibit high discharge capacities at different current densities (1048 and 869 mAh g−1 at 0.2 and 0.8 A g−1, respectively) and excellent capacity retention capability. A capacity decay as low as 0.021% per cycle and an average coulombic efficiency of 98.5% is observed over a long-term cycling of 890 cycles at 0.8 A g−1. The S@PDA electrode has great potential as a low-cost cathode in high energy Li–S batteries.