A novel catalyst of titanium boride toward V3+/V2+ redox reaction for vanadium redox flow battery

Transition metal borides have broad application prospects in the field of electrochemistry due to their excellent physicochemical stability and electrical conductivity . In this study, metal boride (titanium boride, TiB 2 ) was first proposed as a novel catalyst for V 3+ /V 2+ in vanadium redox flow battery . Nano-TiB 2 exhibits large specific surface area and great electrical conductivity, and shows excellent catalytic performance in V 3+ /V 2+ redox reaction . The performance of TiB 2 as negative catalyst for cell was further investigated. Compared with pristine cell, TiB 2 modified cell displays much higher discharge capacity (16.9 mA h) after 50 cycles and the incipient energy efficiency increases by 6.5%. The cell with TiB 2 as the negative electrode catalyst exhibits excellent rate performance at 50–150 mA cm −2 . Voltage efficiency and energy efficiency of modified cell are 8.7% and 7.5% higher than those of pristine cell at 150 mA cm −2 , respectively. In conclusion, this work reveals that nano-TiB 2 is a promising catalyst for enhancing the electrochemical performance toward V 3+ /V 2+ redox reaction for vanadium redox flow battery .