Highly safe lithium vanadium oxide anode for fast-charging dendrite-free lithium-ion batteries

Fast-charging technology is the inevitable trend for electric vehicles (EVs). Current EVs' lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) cannot provide ultrafast power input due to the capacity fading and safety hazards of graphite anode at high rates. Lithium vanadate oxide (Li₃VO₄) has been widely studied as fast-charging anode material due to its high capacity and stability at high rates. However, its highly safe characteristic under fast-charging has not been studied. In this study, a fast-charging anode material is synthesized by inserting Li₃VO₄ in Ti₃C₂T_x MXene framework. The morphologies of Li₃VO₄/Ti₃C₂T_x electrode after cycling at different rates were studied to analyze the dendrites growth. Electrochemical testing results demonstrate that Li₃VO₄/Ti₃C₂T_x composite displays high capacities of 151.6 mA h g^-1 at 5 C and 87.8 mA h g^-1 at 10 C, which are much higher than that of commercial graphite anode (51.9 mA h g^-1 at 5 C and 17.0 mA h g^-1 at 10 C). Moreover, Li₃VO₄/Ti₃C₂T_x electrode does not generate Li dendrite at high rates (5 and 10 C) while commercial graphite electrode grows many Li dendrites under the same conditions, demonstrating fast-charging and high safety of Li₃VO₄/Ti₃C₂T_x composite. Our work inspires promising fast-charging anode material design for LIBs.