Authors
Hongchang Hao, Sathya Narayanan Jagadeesan, Nikhil Rampal, Zaichun Liu, Pawel Czaja, Xintong Yuan, Hao Lyu, Yukio Cho, Jinlei Li, Navina Kalvakaalva, Liwen F Wan, Yi Cui, Jagjit Nanda, Xueli Zheng
Published in
Advanced materials (Deerfield Beach, Fla.). Pages e74611. Aug 12, 2026. Epub Aug 12, 2026.
Abstract
Sodium-sulfur (Na-S) batteries are hindered by sluggish sulfur conversion kinetics and polysulfides dissolution. Although catalysts are widely introduced to improve kinetics, the crucial question persists in how catalytic sites can be effectively accessible to polysulfides especially when pursuing a highly confined sulfur redox pathway. Here we bring catalyst accessibility into focus and demonstrate that a synthetic strategy based on in situ embedded catalytic sites maximizes catalytic accessibility and efficiency. Through a bottom-up, precursor-integrated host synthesis route, we in situ embedded Nb2O5 catalyst into carbon nanotubes in parallel with formation of extensive nanoporosity. Subsequent sulfur impregnation yields a cathode structure (I-Nb2O5@C-S) featuring abundant catalyst-pore-sulfur triple-phase interfaces. As a result, I-Nb2O5@C-S delivers among the most promising sulfur utilization in literature, achieving 1540 mAh g-1 at 0.1 C, and 1044 mAh g-1 at 3 C with a low-capacity decay of 0.027% per cycle over 1500 cycles. In contrast, a counterpart with spatially isolated Nb2O5 and sulfur exhibits deficient catalytic accessibility and negligible improvement in sulfur redox kinetics. Kinetic diagnostics, combined with niobium K-edge and operando sulfur K-edge x-ray absorption spectroscopy, reveal that direct accessibility of catalytic sites to sulfur is essential for synergizing polysulfide confinement and kinetic improvement.
PMID:
42581734
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 12 Aug 2026.
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