Synthesis of sandwich-like vanadium pentoxide/carbon nanotubes composites for high performance supercapacitor electrodes

Sandwich-like, hetero-structured vanadium pentoxide/carbon nanotubes are prepared by incorporating modified carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into layered V2O5 sheets via a simple hydrothermal method. The CNTs ensure fast and smooth electron transfer between V2O5 sheets, leading to higher electrochemical performance compared with V2O5 sheets and bulk V2O5. As a result, the specific capacitance of the V2O5/CNTs complex reaches a value of 553.33 F g−1. The composite also exhibits good cycling stability and maintains 83% of original capacitance over 1000 cycles at 10 mA cm−2.