Ironation mechanism in vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) for iron battery

The recent development of iron batteries appear promising to provide economic, environment friendly, safe and sustainable energy storage devices. We elucidate the ironation mechanism of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) for suitable cathode material for iron battery application. The layer structures of V2O5 favours the intercalation of electrode materials due to enough interstitial voids and it is also a low cost high safety material with high specific capacity and energy density. Because of these benefits its becoming a subject of increasing interest for the researcher in the field of battery application. It has been observed that the suitable amount of cation doping in V2O5 increases the electrical conductivity as well as electrochemical performance. The structure of the material is very important during cycling in the battery and there is a correlation between structural evolution and performance of the battery. In this context two reaction pathways are proposed, based on our first-principles calculation to support the possible explanation for the features of experimental observations. While one of the pathways retains the crystalline structure, the other pathway shows the degradation of material with amorphous structure.