Bronze-type vanadium dioxide holey nanobelts as high performing cathode material for aqueous aluminium-ion battery

• Main Authors: Cai, Yi, Kumar, Sonal, Chua, Rodney, Verma, Vivek, Yuan, Du, Kou, Zongkui, Ren, Hao, Arora, Hemal, Srinivasan, Madhavi
• Other Authors: School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Engineering::Materials; Vanadium Dioxide; Nanobelts
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147557
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Aqueous rechargeable aluminium-ion batteries (AIBs) are promising post lithium-ion battery candidates. However, the capacity and cycling stability are limited by the cathode materials, hindering their widespread application. Herein, bronze-type vanadium dioxide (VO2–B) holey nanobelts have been designed as the cathode material to improve both the capacity and cycling stability for high-performance aqueous AIBs. Benefiting from the unique shear structure and two-dimensional holey nanobelt morphology, the VO2–B electrode delivers a superior specific capacity of up to 234 mA h g−1 at 150 mA g−1 and exhibits a high capacity retention of 77.2% over 1000 cycles at 1 A g−1, which are among the best cathode performances reported for aqueous AIBs. Moreover, a combination of electro-kinetic analysis and ex situ structural evolution characterization experiments reveals the reaction storage mechanism underlying the superior performance. Specifically, proton and Al3+ ions can reversibly co-intercalate/de-intercalate into/from VO2–B. The integration of shear structure and unique holey nanobelts may open the route to the design of high-performance cathodes for multi-valence ion batteries.