Performance-guided upscaling of Fe, Co Co-embedded xerogel carbon hosts for high-loading lithium-sulfur pouch cells under lean electrolyte conditions

Lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) are promising high-energy-density systems, but their commercialization is hindered by polysulfide shuttling, low sulfur conductivity, and volume expansion. Additionally, translational research is hampered by the lack of scalability of existing LSB hosts. This work focuses on the scalable synthesis and commercially relevant demonstration of Fe, Co co-embedded xerogel-derived carbon (FCXC) as a high-performance host material for LSBs, addressing the challenges of commercializing advanced cathode architectures from bench scale to fabrication processing. By systematically adjusting the carbonization temperature, dwell duration, and gelation parameters, the synthesis technique is tuned for rapid batch upscaling. High-quality carbon hosts are consistently synthesized at 280 g scales, with composites up to 900 g, while retaining structural integrity, catalyst morphology, and functional surface area. Physicochemical and electrochemical analyses confirm that the bulk FCXC/S composite retained its lab-scale performance. The 900 g upscaled batch is successfully demonstrated in pouch cells under industrially relevant high-sulfur-loading and lean-electrolyte conditions. The pouch cells show improved cycling stability and adequate capacity, indicating that the proposed material is an effective sulfur host even at larger scales. This study demonstrates reproducible scale-up of high-performance sulfur cathodes, bridging the gap between laboratory innovation and industrial deployment of LSBs.