Microwave-assisted high-yield exfoliation of vanadium pentoxide nanoribbons for supercapacitor applications

Abstract

Ultrathin 2D transition metal oxide materials have great advantages as electrical energy storage materials. At present, improving the yield and processing techniques is one of the top priorities to push these materials for scalable applications. Here, a novel microwave-assisted technique is presented to exfoliate crystalline α-V2O5 powder into wrinkled nanoribbons. The yield of the V2O5 nanoribbons can reach up to 20% after 40 min of microwave treatment. The as-exfoliated V2O5 nanoribbons are further used to form a strongly bound hybrid material with larger graphene oxide (GO) nanosheets through a simple cation-mediated self-assembly process, and the 2D GO template is converted into highly conductive reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets by thermal annealing treatment. The obtained V2O5/rGO hybrid material exhibits typical capacitive behavior with a specific capacitance of 423.6 F g−1 at 1 A g−1, an excellent high-rate capability and good cycling stability. These results suggest the exciting potential of the microwave-assisted technique for high-yield exfoliation of V2O5 nanoribbons toward future electrical energy storage applications.