Scalable synthesis of novel V2O3/carbon composite as advanced cathode material for aqueous zinc-ion batteries

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) are now receiving incremental attention because of their inherent security and reduced cost of metal zinc. As one type of promising cathode candidates for AZIBs, V2O3-based materials have been widely investigated due to the special tunnel structure and high energy density. Nevertheless, the wide application of V2O3-based materials is still limited by the weak reaction kinetics, inferior cycling stability as well as unsatisfying strategies for large-scale synthesis. Herein, we designed and synthesized V2O3/carbon composite with V2O3 coated with a thin carbon layer (denoted as B–V2O3@C) via a facile ball-milling route as cathode material for AZIBs. Benefiting from the desirable structural and process features, the bottlenecks above can be effectively addressed. As a result, the as-synthesized B–V2O3@C delivers a considerable reversible capacity (as high as 430 mAh g−1 at 1000 mA g−1) and enhanced cycling stability (84 mAh g−1 after 2000 cycles at 5000 mA g−1), which are much superior than the those of the commercial V2O3 (C–V2O3). Besides, the Zn-storage mechanism and application in full battery based on B–V2O3@C were successively investigated. This work might contribute to the possible large scale application of high-performance V2O3-based cathode materials for AZIBs.