Plasma Assisted Hydrothermal Synthesis of 2D & 3D Water Intercalated V2O5 Nanosheet Clusters for High Performing Aqueous Zinc Ion Battery

S Choi and SW Kim and C Hwang and JH Park and PC Wang and EYM Ang and SY Lee and S Park and AM Abou-Elanwar and SW Yun and T Lee and H Park and T Vander Laan and NT Yong and KN Jung and S Choi and DH Seo, SMALL STRUCTURES, 6 (2025).

DOI: 10.1002/sstr.202500269

Conventional cathode material synthesis processes (sol-gel, hydrothermal, solid state reactions, and so on) are widely used in aqueous zinc ion battery research, which often requires lengthy, multistage steps involving high temperatures. Herein, a novel plasma- assisted hydrothermal (PAHT) synthesis has been developed to synthesize 2D & 3D water-intercalated vanadium oxide (WiVO) nanosheet clusters at low temperature (<200 degrees C) in a rapid manner (<80 min) with great cathode nanostructure controllability. The resultant WiVO nanosheet clusters exhibit an expanded lattice spacing of 1.23 nm, induced by water intercalation, which enhances Zn ion diffusion kinetics. As a result, 3D WiVO nanosheet clusters achieve a high capacity of 324 mAh g(-)(1) at 0.1 A g(-)(1), and maintaining 95.8% cycle retention after 4000 cycles at 10A g(-1), demonstrating superior aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIB) performances to anhydrous V2O5 & 2D WiVO nanosheets, backed up by rigorous density functional theory calculations and molecular dynamics simulations, elucidating the enhanced AZIB performances of WiVO 3D nanosheet clusters. Universality of the PAHT method is validated through the synthesis of 3D WiVO nanosheet clusters with comparable cell performance using various vanadium-based precursors. Furthermore, the electrochemical degradation process of 2D & 3D nanosheet-based cathode is also explored and the importance of nanosheet clustering, which impedes the degradation process, is demonstrated.

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