N-Doping Induced Lattice Expansion of 1D Template Confined Ultrathin MoS₂ Sheets to Significantly Enhance Lithium Polysulfides Redox Kinetics for Li–S Battery

Preparing MoS₂-based materials with reasonable structure and catalytic activity to enhance the sluggish kinetics of lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) conversion is of great significance for Li–S batteries (LSBs) but still remain a challenge. Hence, hollow nanotubes composed of N-doped ultrathin MoS₂ nanosheets (N-MoS₂ NHTs) are fabricated as efficient S hosts for LSBs by using CdS nanorods as a sacrifice template. Characterization and theoretical results show that the template effectively inhibits the excessive growth of MoS₂ sheets, and N doping expands the interlayer spacing and modulates the electronic structure, thus accelerating the mass/electron transfer and enhancing the LiPSs adsorption and transformation. Benefiting from the merits, the N-MoS₂ NHTs@S cathode exhibits an excellent initial capacity of 887.8 mAh g⁻¹ and stable cycling performances with capacity fading of only 0.0436% per cycle at 1.0 C (500 cycles). Moreover, even at high S loading that of 7.5 mg cm⁻², the N-MoS₂ NHTs@S cathode also presents initial excellent areal capacity of 7.80 mAh cm⁻² at 0.2 C. This study offers feasible guidance for designing advanced MoS₂-based cathode materials in LSBs.