A method for svnthesising an essentially V^-J oxide having a mean vanadium oxidation state of at least +4 hut lower than +5 from NK-VC . said vanadium oxide pref¬ erably consisting essentially of vO^,- V0 or any mixture thereof.
The present invention is concerned with a method for syn- thesising an essentially V205-free vanadium oxide having a mean vanadium oxidation state of at least +4 but lower than +5 from NH4V03, said vanadium oxide preferably con- sisting essentially of V6013, V02 or any mixture thereof.
Vanadium oxides having a mean vanadium oxidation state be¬ tween +5 and +4 have attracted much attention as potential active cathode materials in secondary lithium batteries. These materials are generally prepared from NH4V03 (ammoni- um metavanadate) .
Single phase V205 is readily synthesised by heating NH4V03 in air (see e.g. K.C. Khulbe and R.S. Mann, Can. Jour. Chem. Vol. 53 (1975), p. 2917). The lower oxides, especi¬ ally V6013 (mean oxidation state +4-j ) and V02 (mean oxida- tion state +4), are more difficult to obtain as single- phase materials (see e.g. U. von Sac en and J.R. Dahn, J. Power Sources, Vol. 26 (1989), p. 461).
In J. Thermal Anal., Vol. 16 (1979) 659 Trau discusses the problem of obtaining phase-pure V6013 under thermal decom- position of NH4V03 without using added reduction reactants. The use of S02 as a reducing agent for V205 to form V6013 is technically very complicated; it is difficult to stop the reduction and obtain a homogeneous single-phase V6013 pow¬ der. Trau instead suggests thermal decomposition in a stream of pure nitrogen gas with slow heating to 500-550°C, and a post-treatment with boiling NaOH,.,, to remove V205 as
proposed by Yankelvich et al. in Ukr. Khim. Zh. , Vol. 42 (1976) 659.
Brown et al. reports in J. Thermal Anal, Vol. 6 (1974) 529 the formation of lower oxides using an NH3 atmosphere when decomposing NH4V03.
US-A-4 486 400 describes a process for preparing stoi- chiometric V6013 by thermal decomposing ammonium metava- nadate in a nitrogen atmosphere to produce nonstoichiomet- ric V6013, followed by heating the obtained nonstoichiomet- ric V5013 in an CO/C02-atmosphere having a composition giv¬ ing an oxygen partial pressure equal to the oxygen partial pressure over stoichiometric V6013 to form stoichiometric V6013.
US-A-4 035 476 describes the preparation of agglomerated vanadium oxides of the formula V20x, wherein x is between 3.8 and 4.6, by thermal decomposition of ammonium polyva- nadate ( (NH4)2.0.3V205.nH20) at a temperature of 600 to 900°C and permitting the solid decomposition products and reduc- ing agents to react.
JP 62-197317 describes the production of V6013 or V204 by introducing NH4V03, optionally mixed with <15% V205, into a reaction vessel, heating to a temperature of 380 to 750°C at a rate of 0.5 to 30 K/min, keeping this temperature for 30 min to 3 hours and keeping the pressure at about 3 atm or below by means of a pressure-control valve.
Impurities in the cathode material generally have a nega- tive influence on the overall battery performance, espe¬ cially the battery capacity declines faster in the pres¬ ence of impurities. In particular it is has been shown that even small amounts of other V0X phases, especially
V205, has a negative influence on the lithium intercalating properties of V6013 and V02.
Thus, although several methods for the manufacturing of lower vanadium oxides are known there still exists a need for an improved synthesis method for the preparation of lower vanadium oxides of high purity, i.e. essentially free of V205.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to provide a method for synthesising an essentially V205-free vanadium oxide having a mean vanadium oxidation state of at least +4 but lower than +5 from NH4V03, said vanadium oxide pref¬ erably consisting essentially of V6013, V02 or any mixture thereof.
It has been shown that this object is accomplished by a method described above, in which NH4V03 is heated to a re¬ action temperature sufficient for thermal decomposition of NH4V03, and in which, at said reaction temperature, the pressure is kept on at least 0.5 MPa.
It is a further advantage of the method according to the invention that it does not involve any time-consuming and thus costly separation processes. Nor does it involve the use of added reducing agents in order to obtain the de¬ sired purity, but only carefully controlled temperature and pressure conditions. The synthesis method of the in¬ vention can thus be easily scaled up to any industrial re- quirement.
The formation of vanadium oxides from NH4V03 involves two processes: the decomposition of ammonium metavanadate, followed by the reduction of the formed vanadium species. These processes can proceed simultaneously and the reac¬ tion routes are often quite complicated.
The formation of V6013 from NH4V03 presumably proceeds through a reduction of vanadium from oxidation state +5 resulting in formation of N2 and the lower oxide (V6013) having a mean oxidation state of +4y, according to the following total reaction scheme:
18NH4V03 → 3V6013 + 14NH3 + 15H20 + 2N2 (1)
It is very likely that the same type of reaction route is followed when V02 is formed, thus giving rise to the fol¬ lowing total reaction scheme:
18NH4V03 → 18V02 + 12NH3 + 18H20 + 3N2 (2)
It has surprisingly been shown that the structure of the vanadium oxide produced by carrying out the process ac¬ cording to the invention can be controlled in a remarkably simple manner by varying the pressure under which the product is synthesised:
When the pressure is kept within the range of 0.5 to 2.5 MPa, preferably 1.0 to 2.0 MPa, e.g. about 1.5 MPa, the product obtained is single phase V6013. At pressures below 0.5 MPa, V205 is produced together with V6013. At pressures above 2.5 MPa V02 is formed together with V6013. When the desired product is single phase V02 the pressure should be at least 3.5 MPa, preferably in the range of 3.5 MPa to 7.0 MPa.
In the present context the expression "single phase" is used to designate vanadium oxides which according to X-ray analysis contain virtually no other crystal phases (less than the detectability limit for XRD of approximately 2%) than the predominant one.
The reaction temperature should be selected so that effi¬ cient decomposition of NH4V03 occurs. Accordingly, NH4V03 is preferably heated to a temperature of at least 250 °C, more preferably to a temperature in the range of 300 to 800 °C, even more preferably 425 to 550 °C.
The applied heating rate is advantageously lower than 2 K/min. Preferably the heating rate is in the range of 0.1 to 2 K/min, more preferably in the range of 0.5 to 1 K/min.
The period at which the NH4V03 is kept at the reaction tem¬ perature may vary according to the desired end product. For synthesis of single phase V6013 a reaction period of 10 s to 24 h is preferably employed, whereas for synthesis of single phase V02 a reaction period of 2 h to 5 d is pref¬ erably employed.
The heating is preferably performed under such conditions that the solid decomposition product and the produced de¬ composition gas, including NH3, from the NH4V03 starting material are permitted to react.
In a preferred embodiment such conditions are ensured by heating the NH4V03 in a closed reaction chamber, preferably equipped with means for controlling the pressure in the chamber, such as an adjustable relief valve.
In this embodiment the reaction chamber is preferably filled with an amount of NH4V03 powder corresponding to 1/2 to 9/10 of the reaction chamber volume, so that the pro¬ duced decomposition gas efficiently displaces the air in the reaction chamber.
The invention will be further described with reference to examples and the drawing in which:
Fig. 1 shows an apparatus for performing the process ac¬ cording to the invention;
Fig. 2 shows a real (upper curve) and a simulated (lower curve) X-ray diffractogram of a single-phase V6013 sample produced according to an embodiment of the invention; and
Fig. 3 shows a real (upper curve) and a simulated (lower curve) X-ray diffractogram of a single-phase V02 sample produced according to another embodiment of the invention.
The reaction chamber used for the synthesis of the vana¬ dium oxide according to the invention is shown in Fig. 1. The chamber, tubes and all welds are made of stainless acid resistant steel. The chamber could only be opened and closed at the stainless steel high-vacuum coupling (CF 16, VACUTECH), which was sealed with replaceable copper gas¬ kets, six steel screws (Unbraco M4) and 8 mm silver steel nuts.
The experimental set-up shown in Fig. 1 was used for the synthesis of V6013 (Example 1). The desired overpressure was regulated with a relief valve (NUPRO R3A) fitted with viton standard seals and pre-set with exchangeable springs (NUPRO, blue Kl-A). Prior to an experimental run all parts were cleaned at 60°C in a basic detergent (Labkemi RBS 25) for 60 minutes in an ultra-sound bath and thereafter rinsed in water and ethanol.
A slightly different experimental set-up was used for the V02 synthesis(Example 2). The pressure was controlled with a blanking flange (Balzer DN 16 CF) mounted directly on the reaction chamber.
The final products produced according to the following ex¬ amples 1 and 2 were characterised in terms their phase- purity and degree of crystallinity by X-ray diffraction (XRD) using CuKαx radiation and a STOE & CIE GmbH STADI powder diffractometer equipped with a curved position sen¬ sitive detector.
The mean oxidation state for the vanadium of the final products was determined by titration. The V6013 and V02 products were dissolved in 0.5M H2S04 and 3M HC1, respec¬ tively. The dissolved samples were first titrated up to V(+5) with a standard Ce(S04)2 '4H20 (Merck, 0.10M) solution, followed by titration down to V(+4) with a solution of FeS04 '7H20 (Merck, p.a.), controlled against standard KMn04 (Merck, 0.02M). Three subsequent titrations were perfor¬ med.
Grain-size distribution and morphology of the final prod- ucts were analysed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) on samples pressed onto a carbon film using a Zeiss DSM 960A scanning electron microscope.
EXAMPLE 1
Synthesis of single-phase V6013.
Using the apparatus shown in Fig. 1., single-phase V6013 was synthesised in the following manner:
NH4V03 powder (Gesellschaft fur Electrometallurgie, MBH, 99.9%) was introduced in the chamber (having a volume of 940 cm3) in an amount corresponding to 2/3 of the chamber volume. Then the reaction chamber was sealed, connected to the relief valve arrangement, placed in a temperature con¬ trolled furnace and heated to a temperature of 500 °C at a
heating rate of 0.5 K/min. The relief valve was adjusted so as to control the pressure in the reaction chamber to 1.5 MPa. The temperature was kept at 500°C for 1 minut. The chamber was then allowed to cool to room temperature in an airstream and dismantled. The obtained dark (bluish-black) powder had sintered into agglomerates and had to be scraped out of the chamber.
The phase purity of the resulting product was checked by X-ray diffraction (XRD). In fig. 2 is shown the X-ray dif¬ fractogram for the obtained V6013 product in the upper curve, while the lower curve is a corresponding simulated X-ray diffractogram. XRD showed that the V6013 obtained was phase-pure and highly crystalline.
A mean vanadium oxidation state of 4.30 (±0.01) was deter¬ mined by titration.
SEM studies of the morphology showed needle-like crystals propagating in the direction of the short b-axis in the monoclinic V6013 unit cell. However, very different lengths were observed; from 5 to 50 μm for adjacent crystals. The crystals compacted together on sintering to form spherical powder grains with a maximum dimension of up to 300 μm.
EXAMPLE 2
Synthesis of single-phase V02.
The reaction chamber shown in Fig. 1 was slightly modified for the V02 synthesis, the flange being closed by a plate.
NH4V03 powder (Gesellschaft fur Electrometallurgie, 99.9%) was introduced in the chamber in an amount corresponding to 9/10 of the chamber volume. Then the chamber was heated
in the same manner and at the same rate as in Example 1 to a temperature of 500 °C and annealed at that temperature for 3 days. The obtained V02 powder (greyish-black) con¬ sisted of very fine grains and could easily be removed from the reaction chamber.
The phase purity of the resulting product was checked by XRD. In fig. 3 is shown the X-ray diffractogram for the obtained V02 product in the upper curve, while the lower curve is a corresponding simulated X-ray diffractogram. XRD showed that the V02 formed was phase-pure and crystal¬ line.
A mean vanadium oxidation state of 4.00 (±0.01) was deter- mined by titration.
SEM revealed bulky crystals (5 to 20 μm) in a quite homo¬ geneous and non-sintered powder.
In the following Table I the results from the analysis of the products synthesised in Examples I and II are presen¬ ted.
Table I
Example I II
Compound v6o13 V02
Crystal Structure C 2/m P 2 τ_ a = 11.911(3)A a = 5.750(1)A b = 3.674(1)A b = 4.5289(8)A c = 10.130(2)A c = 5.381(1)A β = 100.90(1)° β = 122.61(1)°
XRD Phase-pure V6013 Phase-pure V02
Mean oxidation state for vanadium +4.30 (±0.01) +4.00 (±0.01)
SEM Needles, sintered Bulky powder, non- to form spherical sintered agglomerates