Novel Insight into Rechargeable Aluminum Batteries with Promising Selenium Sulfide@Carbon Nanofibers Cathode.

Due to the unique electronic structure of Al 3+ with strong Coulombic interaction and complex bonding situation (simultaneously covalent/ionic bonds), traditional electrodes, mismatching with the bonding orbital of Al 3+ , usually exhibit slow kinetic process with inferior rechargeable aluminum batteries (RABs) performance. Herein, to break the confinement of the interaction mismatch between Al 3+ and electrode, we potentially develop a previously unexplored Se 2.9 S 5.1 -based cathode with sufficient valence electronic energy overlap with Al 3+ and easily accessible structure. Through this new strategy, Se 2.9 S 5.1 encapsulated in multichannel carbon nanofibers with free-standing structure exhibits a high capacity of 606 mAh g -1 at 50 mA g -1 , fast kinetics (211 mAh g -1 at 2.0 A g -1 ), robust stability (187 mAh g -1 at 0.5 A g -1 after 3,000 cycles), and enhanced flexibility. Simultaneously, in/ex-situ characterizations also reveal the unexplored mechanism of Se x S y in RABs. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.