Exploring the Enhanced Electrochemical Activity of V₂O₅/h-BN: Investigating Its Structural Dynamics for Asymmetric Supercapacitors

The prospect of supercapacitors solely relies on the propensity of the electrode to exhibit characteristic advancements in adsorption and desorption of ions, charge/discharge response, cyclic stability, specific capacitance (Cs), and power and energy densities. Hence, in this work, attention was given to improving the electrochemical characteristics of vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) by incorporating boron nitride (h-BN) synthesized through a hydrothermal approach. The synthesized V2O5/h-BN nanoparticles exhibited a polycrystalline structure with a V+5 oxidation phase. The stacked heterostructures of V2O5/h-BN enabled improved electrochemical performance compared to pure V2O5 with a specific capacitance of 408 F/g at a current density of 1 A/g in a 1 M KCl electrolyte. From Dunn's method, the capacitive contribution was found evident for the V2O5/h-BN electrode. Through asymmetric supercapacitor studies, V2O5/h-BN was found to exhibit energy and power densities of 25 Wh/kg and 2373 W/kg, respectively. This work clearly shows that incorporating h-BN into V2O5 significantly boosts electrochemical performance, achieving notable cyclic stability with approximately 84.2% capacitance retention after over 5000 cycles in asymmetric supercapacitor tests. The electrochemical study on V2O5/h-BN nanostructures in this work will certainly promote the potential of h-BN heterostructures as an additive for efficient performance in energy storage applications.