Research interest in sulfur cathode employed in lithium sulfur battery (LSB) has been greatly aroused since 2009 due to its inherently high theoretical capacity and likely low manufacturing cost. In the span of 12 years, extensive efforts have been devoted to the scientific and technological solutions to its inherent drawbacks, including electrically isolated nature of S and Li₂S, severe shuttle effect of lithium polysulfides and large volume change from S to Li₂S upon lithiation. Moreover, the latest research realm of sulfur cathode is frequently emphasized towards its validity in practical applications. In this review, we focus exclusively on a research roadmap of 12 years in sulfur cathode development. We begin with a retrospect of the major conceptions and breakthroughs in different aspects to advance sulfur cathode. Additionally, we detail the major contributions from various countries, institutions, corresponding authors, journals and patents. Herein, we hope to give a comprehensively evolutionary story of sulfur cathode and new insight into the future direction of sulfur cathode, namely, carbon architecture design of sulfur host, advanced characterization techniques for in-depth mechanism understanding and full-cell evaluation for a truly viable LSB. We believe more researches into sulfur cathode should be warranted to understand relevant material chemistries, interfaces and engineering present in the LSBs, consequently bringing in numerous opportunities for battery scientists.

自2009年以来，由于其固有的高理论容量和较低的制造成本，锂硫电池（LSB）中使用的硫阴极的研究兴趣已引起极大关注。在过去的12年中，人们一直致力于解决其固有缺点的科学和技术解决方案，包括S和Li ₂ S的电隔离性质，严重的多硫化锂穿梭效应以及从S到Li _2的大体积变化。锂化后的S。此外，硫阴极的最新研究领域经常被强调其在实际应用中的有效性。在这篇综述中，我们专门研究了十二年硫阴极开发的研究路线图。我们首先回顾主要概念和不同方面的突破，以推动硫磺阴极的发展。此外，我们详细介绍了来自不同国家，机构，通讯作者，期刊和专利的主要贡献。在此，我们希望对硫阴极进行全面的演变，并为硫阴极的未来发展方向提供新的见解，即硫基质的碳结构设计，用于深入机理理解的先进表征技术以及对全电池的评估，从而真正可行的LSB。