Vanadium Nitride Electrodes: Limitations and Practical Use in Electrochemical Capacitors

Vanadium nitride has displayed many interesting characteristics for its use as a pseudocapacitive [1] electrode in an electrochemical capacitor, such as good electronic conductivity, good thermal stability, high density and high specific capacitance. Thin films of VN were prepared by D.C. reactive magnetron sputtering. The electrochemical stability of the films as well as the influence of dissolved oxygen in 1 M KOH electrolyte were investigated. In order to avoid material as well as electrolyte degradation, it was concluded that vanadium nitride should only be cycled between -0.4 and -1.0 V vs. Hg/HgO. After a 24 hours stabilization period, the prepared VN thin film showed an initial capacitance of 19 mF.cm -2 and a capacity retention of 96% after 10000 cycles. Furthermore, dissolved oxygen in the electrolyte was demonstrated to cause self-discharge up to a potential above -0.4 V vs. Hg/HgO, where VN was shown to be unstable. Additionally, the presence of oxygen was shown to shift the open circuit potential of a VN electrode to about 0 V through self-discharge processes [2]. Since the performances reached on thin film electrodes are difficult to translate to VN powder, the use of VN thin films in hybrid microdevices has been investigated [3]. Microdevices were designed using VN thin films as negative electrode and electrodeposited Co 3 O 4 as positive electrode in order to combine the high capacity of the Faradaic type cobalt based electrode and the high capacitance and good cycling ability of VN electrode when used in an optimized electrochemical window. The performance of such devices will be reported and discussed with regards to existing literature on the field. References [1] Brousse, T.; Belanger, D.; Long, J. W. J. Electrochem. Soc. 2015, 162, A5185–A5189. [2] Morel, A.; Borjon-Piron, Y.; Lucio Porto, R.; Brousse, T.; Bélanger, D.; J. Electrochem. Soc. 2016, 163, A1077-A1082. [3] Eustache, E.; Frappier, R.; Porto, R. L.; Bouhtiyya, S.; Pierson, J.-F.; Brousse, T. Electrochem. Commun. 2013, 28, 104–106.