Spin Effect to Promote Reaction Kinetics and Overall Performance of Lithium‐Sulfur Batteries under External Magnetic Field

Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) are still limited by the shuttle of lithium polysulfides (LiPS) and the slow Li-S reaction. Herein, we demonstrate that when using cobalt sulfide as a catalytic additive, an external magnetic field generated by a permanent magnet can significantly improve the LiPS adsorption ability and the Li-S reaction kinetics. More specifically, the results show both experimentally and theoretically how an electron spin polarization of Co ions reduces electron repulsion and enhances the degree of orbital hybridization, thus resulting in LSBs with unprecedented performance and stability. Under an external magnetic field, LSBs with 0.0084 % per cycle decay rate at 2 C during 8150 cycles are produced. Overall, this work not only demonstrates an effective strategy to promote LiPS adsorption and electrochemical conversion in LSBs at no additional energy cost but also enriches the application of the spin effect in the electrocatalysis fields.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.: 51572118 and 21975123) and partially by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant Nos.: lzujbky-2021-it33). C. Y. Zhang, C. Q. Zhang, and L. Gong thank the China Scholarship Council for the scholarship support. A. Cabot thanks financial support from the Combenergy project (PID2019-105490RB-C32) from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. The authors also greatly acknowledge the support supported by the Supercomputing Center of Lanzhou University, China.
With funding from the Spanish government through the ‘Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence’ accreditation (CEX2019-000917-S).