Rational designing and prospecting iron-based compounds as efficient host materials for lithium-sulfur batteries

Known for its high theoretical capacity and low cost, the commercialization of Li-S batteries is hindered by the notorious shuttle behavior of the intermediate lithium polysulfides in liquid electrolyte and the sluggish kinetics of the liquid-to-solid reaction. Recently, to improve the electrochemical performance, iron-based compounds with well-designed nano- structures have been developed and applied as host material for sulfur because they have strong chemisorption of polar polysulfide molecules and could reduce the nucleation energy of solid Li2S. 2 S. Here, we have reviewed the latest research progresses (in the last three years) of various iron-based compounds as sulfur host materials and prospected the designing principles of efficient host materials with multiple functionalities to address the issues in sulfur cathode.