Sodium Pre‐Intercalated Carbon/V2O5 Constructed by Sustainable Sodium Lignosulfonate for Stable Cathodes in Zinc‐Ion Batteries: A Comprehensive Study

The aqueous zinc-ion battery (AZIB) has been widely investigated in recent years because it has the advantages of being green, safe, and made from abundant raw materials. It is necessary to continue to study how to prepare cathode materials with excellent performance and high cycling stability for future commercialization. In this work, a strategy was proposed that uses sustainable sodium lignosulfonate as both carbon and sodium sources to obtain a sodium pre-intercalated vanadium oxide/carbon (VO/LSC) composite as the cathode of AZIB. The carbon matrix could improve the electronic conductivity of vanadium oxide, while the sodium lignosulfonate could provide sodium ions pre-intercalated into the layered vanadium oxide simultaneously. Through this strategy, vanadium-based cathode materials with high stability and excellent rate capability were obtained. The VO/LSC cathode delivered high capacities of 350 and 112.8 mAh g-1 at 0.1 and 4.0 A g-1 , respectively. Zinc sulfate and zinc trifluoromethyl sulfonate were selected as electrolytes, and the influence of electrolytes on the performance of VO/LSC was analyzed. The oxygen in the environment was used to oxidize the low-priced vanadium oxide to achieve a self-charging AZIB. This paper provides a valuable strategy for the design of vanadium-based cathode material for AZIB, which can broaden the research and application of AZIB.