Using and recycling V₂O₅ as high performance anode materials for sustainable lithium ion battery

A versatile synthetic approach is demonstrated to fabricate vanadium pentoxide hierarchical structures with three-dimensional electron carriers as anode materials for lithium-ion battery. Such unique structures are favorable for providing easy access of electrolyte to the electrode during lithiation-delithiation process and also shortening the pathway of the ion and electron transport, which guarantee excellent electrochemical performance. As a consequence, high specific capacities of 960 mAh g⁻¹ at 200 mA g⁻¹ and 738 mAh g⁻¹ at 500 mA g⁻¹ after 300 cycles are achieved without obvious decay. More remarkably, it is essential to rebuild a new recycling process owing to the massive waste produced by dealing with spent lithium-ion battery. Therefore, an energy-saving and environment-friendly process is introduced to recycle the used V₂O₅ batteries. Through a facile annealing process, LiV₃O₈ is obtained and reused as sustainable anode materials for the first time. The recycled product LiV₃O₈ delivers excellent electrochemical performance, e.g., a high capacity of 542 mAh g⁻¹ at 200 mA g⁻¹ and the coulombic efficiency of over 99% after 600 cycles. This finding not only promotes the development of vanadium oxides for lithium-ion battery, but also sheds light on searching potential protocol for metal ion battery recycling.