Waste to Wealth: One-Step Exfoliating of Spent Graphite to Build a Low-Cost Cathode for Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

With the booming development of Li-ion batteries (LIBs), the recycling and reusing of spent graphite (SG) from LIBs is becoming increasingly crucial. Meanwhile, developing low-cost and efficient carbon hosts for lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries has gained widespread attention in the past decade. Nevertheless, the processing of carbon materials as sulfur hosts is often energy-consuming and complex. Herein, a simple and environmental-friendly strategy is proposed to reuse the SG to prepare graphene/sulfur composite cathode for Li–S batteries. Due to expanded layer spacing and defects of SG, sulfur molecules can strip it into a graphene-type host via ball milling. By optimizing the S/SG ratio and ball milling time, the as-prepared graphene/sulfur composite cathode with 70 wt.% sulfur content exhibits a high capacity of 1000 mAh g⁻¹. With a high sulfur loading of 4.68 mg cm⁻², the graphene/sulfur cathode can maintain 526 mAh g⁻¹ after 400 cycles. This work provides a novel waste-to-wealth perspective for recycling spent graphite from LIBs to reuse in Li–S batteries.