Graphene-wrapped TiO2 hollow structures with enhanced lithium storage capabilities

Abstract

In this work, we report a rational design of graphene sheets-wrapped anatase TiO(2) hollow particles. This unique hybrid structure demonstrates significantly enhanced lithium storage capabilities compared to the pure TiO(2) counterpart, which clearly uncovers the merit of structural design and rational integration with graphene sheets.

High specific capacity of TiO2-graphene nanocomposite as an anode material for lithium-ion batteries in an enlarged potential window

“…21-1272), indicating that crystalline TiO 2 could be formed by the gas/liquid interfacial reaction. All the peaks in the XRD pattern of the TiO 2 -graphene nanocomposite are also in good agreement with those reported in other similar literatures [31][32][33][34][35]. Furthermore, no obvious diffraction peak attributed to graphite is observed, which indicates that the stacking of graphene sheets in the TiO 2 -graphene nanocomposite is disordered.…”

“…3c and f, the graphene sheets distributed between the TiO 2 nanoparticles can prevent the aggregation of the bare TiO 2 nanoparticles to a certain extent [36], and improve the electrochemical performance. It should be pointed out that the random hybridization of TiO 2 nanoparticles and ultrathin graphene sheets can form a three-dimensional porous structure of the TiO 2 -graphene nanocomposite, which is great beneficial to the rate performance because the electrolyte can soak into the material through the cavities of the nanocomposite [31,35]. The porous structure of the composite can be further confirmed by the subsequent BET measurement.…”

“…In addition, graphene is also regarded as an ideal carbon nanostructure to improve the rate capability of TiO 2 owing to its superior electronic conductivity and large surface area. Recently, several TiO 2 -graphene composites have been reported in lithium-ion batteries and other fields [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. For instance, Li et al [31] synthesized mesoporous anatase TiO 2 nanospheres/graphene composites and the composites were applied in lithium-ion batteries and photocatalysis.…”

Critical Insight into the Relentless Progression Toward Graphene and Graphene‐Containing Materials for Lithium‐Ion Battery Anodes

“…Unfortunately, none of these enabled satisfactory long term stability (maximum 100 cycles), and most of them showed a high 1 st cycle irreversible capacity (see Table 2 ). At the same time, previously reported graphene-containing alloy (e.g., Sn, [ 144 ] SnO 2 [145][146][147][148][149] or Si [150][151][152][153] ), conversion (e.g., Fe 3 O 4 , [154][155][156][157] Co 3 O 4 [158][159][160][161] or CuO [162][163][164] ) and insertion (e.g., TiO 2 [165][166][167][168] or LTO [169][170][171] ) hybrids were further improved. Interestingly, some appealing approaches, such as the use of ternary hybrids (e.g., RGO/SnO 2 /Fe 3 O 4 [ 172 ] or RGO/CNT/ Sn [ 173 ] ), porous 3D (e.g., RGO/Fe 3 O 4 [ 174,175 ] ) and hollow architectures (e.g., RGO/Fe 3 O 4 [ 176 ] and RGO/TiO 2 [ 168 ] ), were introduced.…”

“…In all these cases, however, only modest improvements (especially in terms of cycling stability) were observed with respect to the reports published few years before. Although several publications reported the active material mass loadings, [ 58,60,65,129,130,132,138,142,147,168,172,[177][178][179][180] as well as the tap density of the active material [ 57 ] and the density of the electrode, [ 63 ] no considerations about volumetric capacity were made. Some progression on composite anodes based on graphene and germanium (i.e., alloy material), MFe 2 O 4 (M = Co, Ni, Cu) and M x S y (M = Sn, Sb, In) were reported in 2012.…”