Novel microporous carbon prepared from discarded clothes as host materials for high performance lithium-sulfur battery.

Highlights • A novel DCMC has been prepared and is first used to encapsulate sulfur for Li-S batteries. • The DCMC exhibits ultrahigh specific area. • The DCMC2/S composites deliver excellent electrochemical performance. Abstract Novel microporous carbon materials (DCMC) with excellent electron conductivity and ultrahigh surface area (1896.9 m2 g−1) are successfully prepared from discarded clothes. The porous carbon-encapsulated sulfur composites were synthesized by a feasible melting process and used as host materials for lithium sulfur batteries. Because of the unique microporous, ultrahigh surface area and irregular wrinkled surface coexisting structure, the resulting microporous carbon/sulfur (DCMC/S) composite cathode possesses a good rate capability and long-term cycling performance. The initial discharge capacity of the DCMC2/S composite electrode with 74.3 wt% sulfur content is 1082.6 mAh g−1 at a current rate of 0.2 C. At a higher current rate of 1 C, it possesses excellent cyclic performance and retained a capacity of 422.8 mAh g−1 after 500 cycles with a low capacity fading rate of 0.11% per cycle. The coulombic efficiency remains over 98% during cycling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]