Transition metal oxide-based materials have mainly been studied as electrodes for energy storage devices designed to meet essential energy demands. Among transition metal oxide-based materials, hydrated vanadium pentoxide (V2O5 ‧ nH2O), a vanadium oxide material, has demonstrated great electrochemical performance in the electrodes of energy storage devices. Graphene oxide (GO), a carbon-based material with high surface area and high electrical conductivity, has been added to V2O5 ‧ nH2O to compensate for its low electrical conductivity and structural instability. Here, V2O5 ‧ nH2O/GO nanobelts are manufactured with water without adding acid to ensure that the GO is uniformly dispersed, using a microwave-assisted hydrothermal synthesis. The resulting V2O5 ‧ nH2O/GO nanobelts exhibited a high specific capacitance of 206 F/g and more stable cycling performance than V2O5 ‧ nH2O without GO. The drying conditions of the carbon paper electrodes also resulted in more stable cycling performance when conducted at high vacuum and high temperature, compared with low vacuum and room temperature conditions. The improvement in electrochemical performance due to the addition of GO and the drying conditions of carbon paper electrodes indicate their great potential value as electrodes in energy storage devices.

Silicon heterojunction solar cells can achieve high conversion efficiency with a simple structure. In this study, we investigate the passivation characteristics of VOx thin films as a hole-selective contact layer using ALD (atomic layer deposition). Passivation characteristics improve with iVoc (implied open-circuit voltage) of 662 mV and minority carrier lifetime of 73.9 μs after post-deposition annealing (PDA) at 100 oC. The improved values are mainly attributed to a decrease in carbon during the VOx thin film process after PDA. However, once it is annealed at temperatures above 250 oC the properties are rapidly degraded. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is used to analyze the chemical states of the VOx thin film. As the annealing temperature increases, it shows more formation of SiOx at the interface increases. The ratio of V5+ to V4+, which is the oxidation states of vanadium oxide thin films, are 6:4 for both as-deposition and annealing at 100 oC, and 5:5 for annealing at 300 oC. The lower the carbon content of the ALD VOx film and the higher the V5+ ratio, the better the passivation characteristics.

In the present study, vanadium oxide(V2O5) films for electrochromic(EC) application are fabricated using sol-gel spin coating method. In order to optimize the EC performance of the V2O5 films, we adjust the amounts of polyvinylpyrrolidone(PVP) added to the solution at 0, 5, 10, and 15 wt%. Due to the effect of added PVP on the V2O5 films, the obtained films show increases of film thickness and crystallinity. Compared to other samples, optimum weight percent(10 wt%) of PVP led to superior EC performance with transmittance modulation(45.43 %), responding speeds(6.0 s at colored state and 6.2 s at bleached state), and coloration efficiency(29.8 cm2/C). This performance improvement can be mainly attributed to the enhanced electrical conductivity and electrochemical activity due to the increased crystallinity and thickness of the V2O5 films. Therefore, V2O5 films fabricated with optimized amount of PVP can be a promising EC material for high-performance EC devices.