To investigate the benefits of nanostructure and oxygen vacancies, the half-cells performance of as-prepared materials were evaluated at room temperature by the techniques of cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD),
etc. As depicted in
Fig. 3a, CV curves of O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode at 0.1 mV/s exhibit a broad reduction peak at ~0.5 V in the first cycle and then vanish in the subsequent cycles, which results from the formation of solid electrolyte interface (SEI). During the deintercalation process of K
+, there is an oxidation peak at ~1.2 V. In the subsequent cycles, the nearly overlapped CV curves suggest the highly reversibility of O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode. At the same time, the CV curves of V
2O
3@C electrode exhibits the similar trend to the former (Fig. S7 in Supporting information).
Fig. 3b displays the typical GCD profiles for the first three cycles of O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode. It delivers an initial discharge/charge capacities of 721.4/262.8 mAh/g, corresponding to a coulombic efficiency (CE) of 36.4%. However, the specific discharge and charge capacities of V
2O
3@C electrode are only 664.5 and 216.2 mAh/g, respectively, showing a lower CE (32.5%) (Fig. S8 in Supporting information). More importantly, O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode is capable of exhibiting better rate performance than V
2O
3@C. As illustrated in
Figs. 3c and
d, the reversible capacities of 262.8, 227.8, 201.5, 179.8, 156.9 mAh/g are achieved at 100, 200, 500, 1000 and 2000 mA/g, respectively. When the current density is switched back to 100 mA/g, a reversible capacity of 261.1 mAh/g is recovered and remains stable in following cycles. In contrast, V
2O
3@C electrode exhibits inferior specific capacities at corresponding current densities. Such superior rate capability of O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode is further evidenced by the charge/discharge voltage profiles (Fig. S9 in Supporting information). In addition to better rate performance, O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode also exhibits excellent cycling stability. Specifically, O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode maintains a specific capacity of 253 mAh/g after GCD at 200 mA/g for 100 cycles, which is superior to that of V
2O
3@C (208 mAh/g) (
Fig. 3d). Even cycled at 2 A/g, a reversible capacity of 127.4 mAh/g is still retained after 1000 cycles without obvious capacity decay (
Fig. 3e). Moreover, the SEM images of O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode after intensely cycling are depicted in Fig. S10 (Supporting information). Impressively, O
d-V
2O
3@C electrode could maintain structural integrity during cycling. This can be ascribed to uniform amorphous carbon shell can protect V
2O
3 nanoparticles from corrosion of the electrolyte, which guarantees the satisfactory cycling stability. Carbon matrix is essential to achieve high electronic conductivity and mitigate volume change during cycling, and ultimately to achieve higher capacity and better durability. With low carbon content, the beneficial spherical carbon matrix cannot be formed. In order to study the effects of carbon matrix on K-storage performance, a carbon matrix was prepared by dissolving O
d-V
2O
3@C powder in 1 mol/L HNO
3 solution and stirring for 24 h, washing with distilled water for several times and drying overnight in a vacuum oven at 80 ℃. The SEM images are shown in Figs. S11a and b (Supporting information), where it is evident that after removal of V
2O
3, the spherical morphology is still maintained. Besides, the XRD pattern confirms the (002) peak of pure carbon without any peak referred to V
2O
3 (Fig. S11c in Supporting information). According to the carbon loading (37.7%) in the composite and the stable specific capacity (185 mAh/g at 200 mA/g) of bare carbon, the capacity contribution from carbon in O
d-V
2O
3@C composite is estimated to be 69.7 mAh/g (Fig. S11d in Supporting information).