Facile Synthesis of Cobalt Vanadium Oxides and Their Applications in Lithium Batteries

Cobalt vanadium oxides (CoV2O6 and Co2V2O7) have been one-step synthesized by a soft chemistry route without any templates. The as-prepared materials were characterized by a variety of analytical techniques, including X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The XRD patterns showed that the as-prepared materials are of high crystallinity and high purity. The SEM images showed that the Co2V2O7 material is very uniform and well-separated, with diameters around 1 um. The electrochemical performances were also investigated and the results show that the CoV2O6 material can deliver a high initial discharge capacity of 1243 mAh g-1 at the current density of 20 mA g-1 and the Co2V2O7 material exhibits a high initial discharge capacity of 949 mAh g-1 even at a large current density as high as 500 mA g-1.