ORCID
Quan Li https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8563-1802
Experimental section
The pre-treatment of carbon cloth: The carbon cloth was immersed in 4M H2SO4 for 12 hours and then washed by DIW several times, eventually treated at 400 ℃ for 1 h. The carbon cloth was punched into small disks with an area of about 1 cm-2 by a punching machine.
A similar synthesis process of ZSONT/CC is reported,[47] here listed for convenience. Firstly, ZnO seeds were introduced by immersing carbon cloth disks in zinc acetate dihydrate/ethanol solution three times, followed by vacuum filtration and drying in a Muffle furnace at 350 ℃. The ZnO nanorods were obtained by hydrothermal treatment (immersing the ZnO seeds decorated carbon cloth into aqueous solution containing zinc nitrate hexahydrate (25mM) and methenamine (25mM) at 95 ℃ for 6 h), followed by washing several times with DIW and vacuum drying at 60 ℃. The ZnS/ZnO/carbon cloth was obtained by immersing the ZnO nanorods decorated carbon cloth into 30 ml aqueous solution containing 0.4 M sodium sulfide and 100 μl thioglycolic acid in a water bath at 60 ℃ for 4h, followed by vacuum drying at 60℃. The ZSONT/CC was obtained by immersing the ZnS/ZnO/carbon cloth into 5wt.% acetic acid solution for 30 minutes, followed by vacuum drying at 60℃.
Characterization : JEOL JSM-7800F field emission was exploited to record the morphology features of the samples. X-ray diffraction measurements were performed using a SmartLab, Rigaku with a Cu-Kα radiation source (λ=0.1541nm). A Tecnai F20 ST(FEI) microscope was used to record the TEM image. Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) was used to take element mapping. XPS measurements were carried out using a spectrometer ((Nicolet NEXUS-670) Thermo Scientific, USA)).
Electrochemical measurement : 2032 type coin cells were used to evaluate electrochemical performance in an Argon gas filling glove box (H2O < 0.5 ppm, O2 < 0.5 ppm). The obtained ZSONT/CC host, CC host and Cu were used as working electrodes. Ether Electrolyte was composed of 1M Lithium bis (trifluoromethanesulfonyl) imide (LiTFSI) in 1,3 dioxolane/1,2-dimethoxyethane (DOL/DME, V/V = 1/1) electrolyte with 1 wt.% LiNO3 as additives while carbonate electrolyte consisted of 1M Lithium hexafluorophosphate (LiPF6) in ethylene carbonate/diethyl carbonate (EC/DEC, V/V = 1/1) electrolyte. The separator is Celgard 3501. A battery testing system (LAND battery tester, Wuhan, China) was exploited to test battery performance. To study the depositing/stripping behavior of the host, the cells were dissembled after reaching the corresponding states. To eliminate the dirties, cells were run between 0.01V - 1.0 V (vs. Li/Li+) for three cycles, then 4 mA h cm-2 Li was deposited on the ZSONT/CC, CC and Cu host. LiFePO4 was selected as the cathode to assemble full cells and Li/ZSONT/CC, Li/CC and Li/Cu were chosen as anodes. The mass loading of the LFP cathode is 3.0 mg cm-2 and 7.0 mg cm-2. The amount of electrolyte is 80 μl and 60 μl in the symmetric cells and full cells, respectively. The Coulombic efficiency was tested in Li//ZSONT/CC, Li//CC, and Li//Cu cells in ether electrolyte. LiFePO4 electrode was composed of active materials (80 wt.%), polyvinylidene difluorides (PVDF) binder (10 wt.%), and carbon black (10 wt.%), the cathode was spread on an aluminum foil. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) scanned at a sweep rate of 0.05 mV/s and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) performed in the frequency between 100 kHz and 0.01Hz were measured on a CHI770C electrochemical workstation (Chen Hua Instrument Co., China).