Although research interest in aqueous metal-sulfur batteries (AMSs) has surged due to their intrinsic low cost and high capacity, the practical application of AMSs remains a considerable challenge because of the restrictive cycling stability. To circumvent this issue, we propose an innovative and simple pre-copper strategy to realize a high-durability aqueous Cu-S battery. The pre-copper strategy can effectively promote a stable metal dissolution/deposition, compensate for charge carriers, and facilitate reaction kinetics during the subsequent process. As a result, the aqueous Cu-S battery when coupled with S-decorated porous Ti₃C₂ (S-d-Ti₃C₂) exhibits excellent electrochemical performance, delivering a highly reversible capacity of 1805.4 mAh·g⁻¹ in the initial cycle at 0.8 A·g⁻¹, impressive cycling stability with 90.2% capacity retention over 800 cycles, and ultralow polarization ~ 0.08 V even at a high current density of 3.1 A·g⁻¹. The findings obtained in this work could pave the way for the design of high-performance sulfur-based aqueous batteries, which fill the vacancy of the necessary metal anode, delivering merits in both cost and cycle life.

Sulfur and selenium have been paid more and more attention in energy storage systems because of their high theoretical specific gravimetric and volumetric capacities. With the increasing scarcity of lithium resources, secondary batteries made of sulfur and selenium coupled with other alkali metal/alkaline earth metals (e.g. Na, K, Mg) are expected to play a vital role in future production and human life. Due to the volume expansion, poor conductivity and shuttle effect, the structure design of cathode, as one of the important roles in metal-S/Se batteries, has always been a hot and difficult point. In the review, various host materials of S and Se are clarified and discussed. Typically, carbonaceous materials are the most widely used hosts, while polar materials are becoming more and more popular in metal-S/Se batteries. Through a comprehensive overview, it is hoped that previous research experiences can provide further reference and guidance for the sustainable development of metal-S/Se batteries.