Various morphologies of nanostructured vanadium pentoxide: Synthesis and characterization
Helena Nourizadeh, Fereshteh Rashchi
School of Metallurgy and Materials Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, PO Box
11155/4563, Tehran, Iran
ABSTRACT
Low-dimensional nanostructures have gained great interest due to their special physical and chemical
properties. These properties make them very different from bulk counterparts. Vanadium pentoxide (V2O5),
one of the semiconductor materials with layered structures, has attracted great interest because of its low
discharge voltage, low electric conductivity and slow diffusion kinetics that are currently used in lithium ion
batteries, super-capacitors, sensors and various nanodevices. Recently, many studies have focused on various
synthesis procedures of nanostructured V2O5 that yield various morphologies of the nanostructure such as
nanowires, nanorods, nanoflowers and nanowaxberries. In this study, synthesis of various morphologies by
precipitation, thermal decomposition and hydrothermal approaches has been performed using different
additives and precursors. The main objective is to investigate the effect of morphology in this system
characterized by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), x-ray powder diffraction (XRD)
measurements and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Precursors includes commercial micro-sized
vanadium pentoxide, oxalic acid, ammonium metavanadate and nitric acid. Existence and the amount of
surfactants such as polyvinylpyrrolidone and n-hexane also affect the morphology and particle size of the
nanostructure. Investigation of the nanostructured V2O5 synthesis procedures can develop its morphology to
achieve the best performance in various applications.
KEYWORDS
Nanostructured vanadium pentoxide, Precipitation, Thermal decomposition, Hydrothermal, Morphology