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Solution Synthesis and Electrochemical Properties of V2O5 Nanostructures

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Date: 03-24-2006
Start Time: 2:00pm
End Time: 3:00pm
Speaker: Prof. Guozhong Cao
From: University of Washington
Location: 214 Mudd
Hosted by: Center for Integrated Science

Abstract:

In this seminar, I will present our recent work on the growth and electrochemical properties of single crystalline vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) nanorod, amorphous V2O5 nanotube, and Ni-V2O5 nanocable arrays. Vanadium pentoxide nanorod arrays were grown by electrochemical deposition, surface condensation induced by a pH change, and sol electrophoretic deposition. Uniformly sized vanadium oxide nanorods with a length of about 10.m and diameters of 100 or 200 nm were grown over large area with near unidirectional alignment. TEM micrographs and electron diffraction patterns of V2O5 nanorods clearly show the single-crystalline nature of nanorods from all three growth routes with a growth direction of [010]. Electrochemical analysis revealed that nanorod array electrodes possess significantly improved storage capacity and charge/discharge rate approximately 5 times higher applicable current density than that of sol-gel derived films. V2O5 coated Ni nanorods arrays were grown by template-based electrochemical deposition of Ni, followed by electrophoretic deposition of V2O5 layer. Each Ni core nanorod is covered completely and uniformly by V2O5 shell of average thickness of about 40nm. The current density and Li+ insertion capacity of Ni-V2O5 nanocable array electrodes possess approximately 10 times larger capacitance than single crystal V2O5 nanorod arrays and 40 times larger than sol-gel derived polycrystalline V2O5 films. The most significant improvement in the electrochemical supercapacitor performance based on Ni-V2O5 nanocable arrays is on the simultaneous enhancement of specific power and specific energy with the enhancement easily above one order of magnitude. Further improvement in energy storage density and cyclic fatigue resistance with carefully designed doping and amorphotization will also be briefly discussed.