XAS AND ELECTROCHEMICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF LITHIATED HIGH-SURFACE-AREA V2O5 AEROGELS

V2O5 aerogel (ARG) has been recently proposed as cathode material for rechargeable lithium batteries. Such a material is amorphous and consi sts of a highly interconnected solid network with a surface area up to 450 m(2)/g, and a specific pore volume as much as 2.3 cm(3)/g. In a p revious paper, it was shown that up to 4 equivalents of lithium per mo le of V2O5 aerogel can be inserted by means of chemical or electrochem ical lithiation. In the present work, the lithium composition range ha s been extended. By chemical lithiation (CL) a composition Li5.8V2O5, the highest ever reported for any vanadium oxide host, was achieved. T he equilibrium open circuit voltage (OCV)-composition curve of the che mically lithiated aerogel samples showed a wide plateau extending up t o 5.8 equivalents of lithium per mole of V2O5. The surprisingly high O CV has been correlated with the characteristic morphology and structur e of the aerogel material by means of X-ray diffraction and absorption and XPS spectroscopies.