In situ prepared amorphous VOH-Polyaniline@Carbon cloth as cathodes for high performance zinc ion batteries

Vanadium-based compounds are promising cathode materials for aqueous zinc ion batteries (AZIBs) while suffering from notorious poor conductivity and structural instability, leading to severe performance degradation. Herein, we grew polyaniline intercalated VOH nanoarrays on conductive carbon cloth (VOH-PANI@CC) via one-step electrochemical deposition route. Owing to the advantageous nature of amorphous structure of VOH, good conductivity of PANI and the strong synergistic effect between two components, the VOH-PANI@CC free-standing electrodes showed abundant ion diffusion paths, plentiful ion storage sites and high conductivity. The electrode thus achieves an initial charging capacity up to 500 mAh g⁻¹ at 0.1 A g⁻¹ and can still maintain 117.4 mAh g⁻¹ for 500 cycles at 0.5 A g⁻¹. Furthermore, ex-situ XRD and XPS studies revealed the zinc storage process of VOH-PANI@CC and underlying mechanism of the enhanced performance. This work provides a universality design strategy for designing advanced high-performance V-based cathodes for AZIBs.