Synthesis of V2O5 hierarchical structures for long cycle-life lithium-ion storage

A facile solvothermal method was used to synthesize V2O5 nanosheet hierarchical structures. Using different solvent systems, we obtained the hierarchical structures with different nanosheet thicknesses of <10 nm, 50-100 nm and 100-200 nm, respectively. A systematic investigation of their electrochemical properties showed that both the reversible lithium storage capacity and the cycling stability increased with the reduced thickness of nanosheets. In order to prevent the serious structural damage of the V2O5 electrodes during cycling, we employed a voltage-regulation charge/discharge scheme which led to a long cycle-life with an average capacity decay of 0.04% (2.0 to 3.0 V) and 0.10% per cycle (2.8 to 4.0 V) over 500 cycles.