Environmentally Friendly Chemical Route to Vanadium Oxide Single-Crystalline Nanobelts as a Cathode Material for Lithium-Ion Batteries

Orthorhombic V(2)O(5) single-crystalline nanobelts with widths of 100-300 nm, thicknesses of 30-40 nm, and lengths up to tens of micrometers have been synthesized on a large scale in a hydrogen peroxide aqueous solution by an environmentally friendly chemical route. Such nanobelts grow along the direction of [010]. The influence of the reaction time on the crystal structures and morphologies of the resulting products are investigated. A probable dehydration-recrystallization-cleavage mechanism for the formation of V(2)O(5) nanobelts is proposed. The experiments demonstrate that the use of a nanosized belt-like structure can considerably enhance the specific discharge capacity in lithium-ion batteries.