The rational combination of conductive nanocarbon with sulfur leads to the formation of composite cathodes that can take full advantages of each kind of building block, which is an effective way in the construction of cathode materials for lithium-sulfur (Li-S) battery with high energy density.Generally, the areal sulfur loading amount is less than 2.0 mg/cm2, resulting in a low areal capacity far below the acceptable value for practical applications.In this contribution, a hierarchical free-standing carbon nanotube (CNT)-S paper electrode with an ultrahigh sulfur loading of 6.3 mg/cm2 was fabricated by a facile bottom-up strategy.In the CNT-S paper, short multi-walled CNTs were employed as short-range electrical conductive framework for sulfur accommodation, while the super long CNTs served as both long-range conductive networks and intercrossed mechanical scaffolds.An initial discharge capacity of 6.2 mA·h/cm2 (995 mA·h/g), a 60% utilization of sulfur, and a slow cyclic fading rate of 0.20 %/cyc within the initial 150 cycles at a low current density of 0.05 C was achieved.The areal capacity can be further increased to 15.1 mA·h/cm2 by stacking three CNT-S paper electrodes, namely with areal sulfur loading of 17.3 mg/cm2 as the cathode in a Li-S cell.The as-obtained free-standing paper electrode is promising for flexible electronic devices based on Li-S batteries with low cost and high energy densities.