High surface area V2O5 aerogel intercalation electrodes

Supercritical drying of V2O5 gels yields amorphous aerogels (ARG) that serve as reversible, high capacity hosts for lithium ion intercalation. We have found that ARG material consists of a highly interconnected solid network that has a specific pore volume of 2.3 cm(3)/g. The material hosts at least 4 Li+ per mole of V2O5 (ARG) as determined by both galvanostatic intermittent titration (GITT) and chemical lithiation (CL) techniques. The equilibrium voltage-composition curve is identical for both GITT and CL techniques as well. V2O5 (ARG) has a specific energy in excess of 1600 Wh/kg, the highest ever reported for any vanadium oxide host.