Electrochemical behaviour of sputtered c-V2O5 and LiCoO2 thin films for solid state lithium microbatteries

Here are reported for the first time electrochemical data on all-solid-state lithium microbatteries using crystalline sputtered V2O5 thin films as cathode materials and LiPON as solid electrolyte. The stable specific capacity of 30 µAh/cm2 found with a 2.4 µm thick film competes very well with the best values obtained for solid state microbatteries using amorphous films. With the challenge of decreasing the temperature of heat treatment for sputtered LiCoO2 thin films, we show that a temperature of 500 °C combined with an optimized bias sputtering (-50 V) allows to get highly crystalline deposits, to minimize the presence of Co3O4 and to suppress any trace of the cubic phase. At the same time the theoretical specific capacity is reached in the 4.2 V-3 V range and a good cycling behaviour is achieved with a high capacity of 50 µAh/cm2/µm after 140 cycles at 10 µA.cm2.