Polysulfide shuttle control: Towards a lithium-sulfur battery with superior capacity performance up to 1000 cycles by matching the sulfur/electrolyte loading

•The polysulfide shuttle was tuned by the loading of sulfur and electrolyte.•A high initial discharge capacity of 1053 mAh g−1 at a high rate of 1 C.•An ultralow decay rate of 0.049%/per cycle during 1000 cycles.•The polysulfide shuttle was suppressed to a shuttle factor of 0.02.

Lithium-sulfur battery is one of the most promising alternative power sources, but the polysulfide shuttle between the anode and cathode induces low Coulombic efficiency, low utilization of the sulfur cathode, and severe degradation of cycle life. Herein, the polysulfide shuttle was tuned by the loading of sulfur and electrolyte in a Li-S cell. A lithium-sulfur cell with a high initial discharge capacity of 1053 mAh g−1 at a high rate of 1 C and an ultralow decay rate of 0.049%/per cycle during 1000 cycles was obtained by using carbon nanotube@sulfur cathode and suppressing polysulfide shuttle to a shuttle factor of 0.02 by matching the sulfur/electrolyte loading. The use of matching the sulfur/electrolyte loading is a facile way to tune the shuttle of polysulfide, which provides not only new insights to the energy chemistry of Li/S batteries, but also important principle to assemble a Li/S cell with recommend loading for their commercialization application in portable mobile devices and electric vehicles.

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