Formation of single-phase stage-1 MoCl 5GIC in the presence of MoO 3

Abstract

Stage-1 MoCl 5—graphite intercalation compound (GIC) was successfully prepared in a single phase by heating the mixture of MoCl 5 and MoO 3 with natural graphite of different sizes ranging from 10 to 400 μm. The stage structure of resultant MoCl 5GICs was found to be dependent on the amount of MoO 3. Use of MoO 3 was also found to accelerate the intercalation reaction, similar to MoOCl 3 in our earlier studies. However, MoO 3 was much better than MoOCl 3 because of its stability, availability and non-hygroscopic nature. A comparative study of the use of MoOCl 3 with MoCl 5 to form the pure stage-1 MoCl 5GIC was also carried out.