V₂ O₅ Textile Cathodes with High Capacity and Stability for Flexible Lithium-Ion Batteries

Textile-based energy-storage devices are highly appealing for flexible and wearable electronics. Here, a 3D textile cathode with high loading, which couples hollow multishelled structures (HoMSs) with conductive metallic fabric, is reported for high-performance flexible lithium-ion batteries. V₂ O₅ HoMSs prepared by sequential templating approach are used as active materials and conductive metallic fabrics are applied as current collectors and flexible substrates. Taking advantage of the desirable structure of V₂ O₅ HoMSs that effectively buffers the volume expansion and alleviates the stress/strain during repeated Li-insertion/extraction processes, as well as the robust flexible metallic-fabric current collector, the as-prepared fabric devices show excellent electrochemical performance and ultrahigh stability. The capacity retains a high value of 222.4 mA h g^-1 at a high mass loading of 2.5 mg cm^-2 even after 500 charge/discharge cycles, and no obvious performance degradation is observed after hundreds of cycles of bending and folding. These results indicate that V₂ O₅ HoMSs/metallic-fabric cathode electrode is promising for highly flexible lithium-ion batteries.