Carbon-Doped Vanadium Nitride Used as a Cathode of High-Performance Aqueous Zinc Ion Batteries

Rechargeable aqueous zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) have been researched widely because of some special strengths of high safety, low cost, and high energy density. Nevertheless, aqueous zinc ion batteries still face imperfections such as low discharge voltage and poor cycling stability. Therefore, the synthesis of high-performance carbon-coated VN by reduction and nitrification of V2O5 in an NH3 atmosphere is proposed. The cathode material of carbon-doped VN (coral VN/C) has a specific capacity of 322 mAh g–1 at a current density of 0.5 A g–1, which benefit from the nanoscale size and porous, stacked structure. Furthermore, the battery maintains a specific capacity of 111 mAh g–1 and a capacity retention rate of 95% at a high current density of 15 A g–1 after 6780 cycles. These results prove that coral VN/C is a new excellent ZIB cathode material, which exhibits a high energy density and high cycle stability for the ZIB cathode material, and propose an excellent coral VN/C synthesis method.