Highly safe lithium vanadium oxide anode for fast-charging dendrite-free lithium-ion batteries

Fast-charging technology is the inevitable trend for electric vehicles (EVs). Current EVs' lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) cannot provide ultrafast power input due to the capacity fading and safety hazards of graphite anode at high rates. Lithium vanadate oxide (Li3VO4) has been widely studied as fast-charging anode material due to its high capacity and stability at high rates. However, its highly safe characteristic under fast-charging has not been studied. In this study, a fast-charging anode material is synthesized by inserting Li(3)VO(4)in Ti3C2Tx MXene framework. The morphologies of Li3VO4/Ti3C2Tx electrode after cycling at different rates were studied to analyze the dendrites growth. Electrochemical testing results demonstrate that Li3VO4/Ti3C2Tx composite displays high capacities of 151.6 mA h g(-1) at 5 C and 87.8 mA h g(-1) at 10 C, which are much higher than that of commercial graphite anode (51.9 mA h g(-1) at 5 C and 17.0 mA h g(-1) at 10 C). Moreover, Li3VO4/Ti3C2Tx electrode does not generate Li dendrite at high rates (5 and 10 C) while commercial graphite electrode grows many Li dendrites under the same conditions, demonstrating fast-charging and high safety of Li3VO4/Ti3C2Tx composite. Our work inspires promising fast-charging anode material design for LIBs.