Freestanding reduced graphene oxide/sodium vanadate composite films for flexible aqueous zinc-ion batteries

With the booming development of portable and wearable electronic devices, flexible energy storage devices have attracted great attention. Among various energy storage devices, aqueous zinc ion batteries (ZIBs) are one of the promising candidates due to their low cost, good safety, high energy and power densities. However, the conventional cathodes of aqueous ZIBs were often prepared by mixing active materials with binders and conductive additives and then coating them onto current collectors. The resultant cathodes often suffer from unsatisfied flexibility. Herein, we fabricated freestanding reduced graphene oxide/ NaV3O8•1.5H2O (RGO/NVO) composite films with interlinked multilayered architecture by a vacuum filtrating process. Such composite films exhibit excellent mechanical property and high electronic conductivity. Owing to unique architecture, they display a high capacity of 410 mA h g−1 and excellent cycling performance up to 2000 cycles with a high capacity retention of 94%. Moreover, RGO/NVO composite films can directly serve as the cathodes of flexible aqueous ZIBs. As a proof of concept, flexible ZIBs were assembled based on the composite films. Impressively, they exhibit stable performance at different bending states, demonstrating great potential application in flexible energy storage devices.