Graphene-vanadium 'ribbons' enhance battery performance

The Rice University lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan determined that the material is a superior cathode for batteries that could supply high energy density and significant power density. The research appears online this month in the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.

The ribbons created at Rice are claimed to have potential that far outweighs current materials for their ability to charge and discharge very quickly. Cathodes built into half-cells for testing at Rice fully charged and discharged in 20 seconds and retained more than 90 per cent of their initial capacity after more than 1,000 cycles.

‘This is the direction battery research is going, not only for something with high energy density but also high power density,’ Ajayan said in a statement. ‘It’s somewhere between a battery and a supercapacitor.’

The ribbons also have the advantage of using relatively abundant and cheap materials. ‘This is done through a very simple hydrothermal process, and I think it would be easily scalable to large quantities,’ he said.