Recent Progress in Self‐Supported Metal Oxide Nanoarray Electrodes for Advanced Lithium‐Ion Batteries

Abstract

The rational design and fabrication of electrode materials with desirable architectures and optimized properties has been demonstrated to be an effective approach towards high‐performance lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs). Although nanostructured metal oxide electrodes with high specific capacity have been regarded as the most promising alternatives for replacing commercial electrodes in LIBs, their further developments are still faced with several challenges such as poor cycling stability and unsatisfying rate performance. As a new class of binder‐free electrodes for LIBs, self‐supported metal oxide nanoarray electrodes have many advantageous features in terms of high specific surface area, fast electron transport, improved charge transfer efficiency, and free space for alleviating volume expansion and preventing severe aggregation, holding great potential to solve the mentioned problems. This review highlights the recent progress in the utilization of self‐supported metal oxide nanoarrays grown on 2D planar and 3D porous substrates, such as 1D and 2D nanostructure arrays, hierarchical nanostructure arrays, and heterostructured nanoarrays, as anodes and cathodes for advanced LIBs. Furthermore, the potential applications of these binder‐free nanoarray electrodes for practical LIBs in full‐cell configuration are outlined. Finally, the future prospects of these self‐supported nanoarray electrodes are discussed.

Electrodeposition of Vanadium Oxides at Room Temperature as Cathodes in Lithium-Ion Batteries

“…A great number of strategies have been proposed to develop nanoelectrodes including the self-assembled nanostructures [4], hierarchical 3D mixed conducting networks [5], self-supported nanoarrays with diverse morphologies on 2D/3D conductive substrates as binder-free electrodes [6], 2D nanostructures through dissolution-splitting method from their bulk crystal [7], ultrasonic treatment of powders [8], nanocomposites composed of graphene or carbon with actives [9][10][11], introduction of surface defects by gas annealing [12], and doping by metallic species [13,14]. Nevertheless, in some cases, the nanostructured electrodes require complicated fabrication approaches and present poor mechanical stability along with limited rate capability.…”

Additive‐Free Nb2O5−TiO2 Hybrid Anode towards Low‐Cost and Safe Lithium‐Ion Batteries: A Green Electrode Material Produced in an Environmentally Friendly Process

“…Fourth, as binder is not used in the Nb 2 O 5 −TiO 2 (1 h) electrode system, therefore grain boundaries and interface charge transfer resistance are likely to be reduced significantly . As a result, high electron transport along the lattices of electroactive Nb 2 O 5 −TiO 2 is expected.…”

Recent advances in TiO2 nanoarrays/graphene for water treatment and energy conversion/storage

“…TiO 2 has received much attention for Li-ion battery because of its several merits such as low cost and friendly environment. Importantly, TiO 2 is a quick and low voltage insertion host for Li, and its structure can keep stable during the Li insertion extraction process [113]. However, just like every coin has two sides, TiO 2 also has its weaknesses, for example poor cycling performance due to its poor electron transport ability.…”