Dr FEI Ban, a postdoctoral fellow from PolyU’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, received the Best Poster Award as the first author at the 22nd International Meeting on Lithium Batteries (IMLB) held in Hong Kong in June 2024. His poster presentation, titled "Enhanced Lithium-Sulfur Battery Performance via a Hierarchical Nanoreactor with Integrated Adsorption and Catalytic Sites", stood out among those of other participants. The award-winning team included Dr FEI, his supervisor, Dr YU Xiaoliang, Research Assistant Professor from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, in collaboration with another researcher from Fuzhou University in Mainland China.

High-performance cathode host materials can improve the sulfur utilisation and solve the lithium polysulfide (LiPS) shuttle effect and the sluggish redox kinetics in lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs). In this research, the team fabricated a multifunctional Ag/VN@Co/NCNTs nanocomposite with multiple adsorption and catalytic sites within a hierarchical nanoreactor structure, which serves as a robust sulfur host for LSB cathodes. This novel material exhibits outstanding electrochemical performance with a superior rate performance of 609.7 mAh g^-1 at 4 C^Note1, as well as excellent stability with a capacity decay of 0.018% per cycle after 2,000 cycles at 2 C.  

Presented by its Scientific and Organizing Committees, IMLB 2024 is the premier international conference on the state of lithium battery science and technology, and its current and future applications in transportation, commercial, aerospace, biomedical, and other promising sectors.

1. C values are relative measuring unit of power. 1C is defined as the power that would, over an hour, deliver the complete capacity of a battery, and 4C is four times the power of 1C.

Fei, B., Zhan, H., & Yu, X. (2024, June 16-21). Enhanced lithium-sulfur battery performance via a hierarchical nanoreactor with integrated adsorption and catalytic sites [Poster Session]. 22nd International Meeting on Lithium Batteries, Hong Kong.