Stabilizing Sodium Battery Cathode of Layered V₂O₅ via Compositing with Semiconducting Nitrogen-Rich Perylene

Sodium-ion batteries offer significant advantages for sustainable energy storage due to the abundance, safety, and low cost of sodium resources. In promoting the application, vanadium pentoxide (V2O5), a typical layered transition metal oxide with tunable interlayer spacing, has emerged as a promising cathode material owing to its high theoretical specific capacity (235 mAh g–1). However, the structural collapse of its layered framework and the inherent low electrical conductivity limit its practical progress. To restrain the layered slip, in this work, V2O5 was modified with nitrogenous organic semiconductor (Perylene-Dicyandiamide, PDCD) to construct PDCD/V2O5 composite via one-step coordination method. PDCD was uniformly anchored onto the surface (110) of V2O5, where nitrogen-rich groups coordinated with V5+ to form stable complex. This coordination mitigates the structural collapse of V2O5, thereby significantly enhancing the rate capability and cycling stability of PDCD/V2O5. The synergistic contribution of PDCD and V2O5 enhanced the capacity of the PDCD/V2O5 cathode, achieving an approximately 20% increased discharge specific capacity (116 mAh g–1) and approaching the theoretical capacity. In addition, the PDCD/V2O5 electrode exhibits a higher rate and cycling performance than commercial carbon/V2O5 cathode contributing by the faster reaction kinetics of both sodium ions and electrons. This study offers valuable insights and strategies for stabilizing inorganic hybrid composites with semiconducting nitrogenous compounds.