Carbon Textile Decorated with Pseudocapacitive VC/V_xO_y for High‐Performance Flexible Supercapacitors

Abstract It is demonstrated that, via V₂O₅ coating by low temperature atomic layer deposition and subsequent pyrolysis, ubiquitous cotton textile can readily turn into high‐surface‐area carbon textile fully decorated with pseudocapacitive V_xO_y/VC widely usable as electrodes of high‐performance supercapacitor. It is found that carbothermic reduction of V₂O₅ (C + V₂O₅ → C′ + VC + CO/CO₂(g)) leads to chemical/mechanical activation of carbon textile, thereby producing high‐surface‐area conductive carbon textile. In addition, sequential phase transformation and carbide formation (V₂O₅ → V_xO_y → VC) occurred by carbothermic reduction trigger decoration of the carbon textile with redox‐active V_xO_y/VC. Thanks to the synergistic effect of electrical double layer and pseudocapacitance, the supercapacitors made of the hybrid carbon textile exhibit far better energy density (over 30‐fold increase) with excellent cycling stability than the carbon textile simply undergone pyrolysis. The method can open up a promising and facile way to synthesize hybrid electrode materials for electrochemical energy storages possessing advantages of both electrical double layer and pseudocapacitive material.