Copper Doped Li₃VO₄ as Anode Material for Lithium-ion Batteries

Li₃VO₄ has been considered as a promising anode material because of its high theoretical capacity (394mAh g⁻¹) and zero strain during the charge and discharge processes. However, its electronic conductivity is low, which has led to an electrochemical performance unfavourable for practical application. In this work, copper-doped Li₃VO₄ is prepared by a simple and inexpensive sol-gel method. The doped Li₃VO₄ delivers high initial discharge and charge capacities of up to 63 mAh g⁻¹ after 25 cycles for 5 % Cu-doped material at a rate of 0.5 C. Conductive Cu is found to enable better Li⁺ ion storage due to the improved electronic conductivity, Li ion diffusion, and structural stability, improving cycling and rate performance. This work provides some hints for preparing Li₃VO₄ based anodes with high electrochemical performance.