Molybdenum oxide/carbon composites derived from the CO2 oxidation of Mo2CTx (MXene) for lithium ion battery anodes

Abstract

Multilayer Mo2CTx MXene is used as a precursor to produce molybdenum oxide (MoO2)-disordered carbon hybrid materials using a one-step CO2 oxidation. The composites show clear, short plateaus in the charge/discharge curves as well as reversible phase transition peaks in cyclic voltammetry for the resulting MoO2. The electrochemical measurements support the generation of the metal oxide in the resulting composite materials. The generation of molybdenum oxide from Mo2CTx is verified from the plateau in Li+ charge-discharge profile as wells as various characterizations of XRD, XPS, etc. The resulting MoO2 active material coated on a copper foil shows a Li-ion capacity of 323 mAh/g at 50 mA/g (0.1 C) and 180 mAh/g at 1 A/g (4.0 C) with 85% retention for approximately 300 cycles.