Preparation of Porous Vanadium Pentoxide Nanotubes by Electrospinning

Porous vanadium oxide nanotubes (VNTs) were prepared by electrospinning technique and following sintering treatment. We chose commercial vanadium oxides and benzyl alcohol and Isopropanol as the raw materials to form low-cost inorganic vanadium sol solution followed by the appropriate addition of poly(vinylpyrrolidone) (PVP) as electrospinning vanadium precursor. Thus, we prepared the one-dimensional (1D) VNTs, which mainly contain V2O5-sol and PVP, followed by varying the holding time of sintering. Crystal structure and the morphology of electrospun VNTs were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) also displays carbon remains after PVP is sintered. Results show that the electrospun VNTs are about 400 similar to 700 nm in diameter, and 2 similar to 10 mu m in length with various degrees of porous interconnected fibrous morphology which could be seen by SEM and TEM images. And the degrees of the fracture of the porous vanadium pentoxide nanotubes are various with different holding time at high temperature.