Layered titanate hierarchical spheres as a promising pseudocapacitive electrode material for high rate lithium ion batteries

Structure, Properties, Preparation, and Application of Layered Titanates

As a typical cation-exchangeable layered compound, layered titanate has a unique open layered structure. Its excellent physical and chemical properties allow its wide use in the energy, environmental protection, electronics, biology, and other fields. This paper reviews the recent progress in the research on the structure, synthesis, properties, and application of layered titanates. Various reactivities, as well as the advantages and disadvantages, of different synthetic methods are discussed. The reaction mechanism and influencing factors of the ion exchange reaction, intercalation reaction, and exfoliation reaction are analyzed. The latest research progress on layered titanates and their modified products in the fields of photocatalysis, adsorption, electrochemistry, and other applications is summarized. Finally, the future development of layered titanate and its exfoliated product two-dimensional nanosheets is proposed.

Asymmetric Pseudocapacitors Based on Interfacial Engineering of Vanadium Nitride Hybrids

Vanadium nitride (VN) shows promising electrochemical properties as an energy storage devices electrode, specifically in supercapacitors. However, the pseudocapacitive charge storage in aqueous electrolytes shows mediocre performance. Herein, we judiciously demonstrate an impressive pseudocapacitor performance by hybridizing VN nanowires with pseudocapacitive 2D-layered MoS2 nanosheets. Arising from the interfacial engineering and pseudocapacitive synergistic effect between the VN and MoS2, the areal capacitance of VN/MoS2 hybrid reaches 3187.30 mF cm-2, which is sevenfold higher than the pristine VN (447.28 mF cm-2) at a current density of 2.0 mA cm-2. In addition, an asymmetric pseudocapacitor assembled based on VN/MoS2 anode and TiN coated with MnO2 (TiN/MnO2) cathode achieves a remarkable volumetric capacitance of 4.52 F cm-3 and energy density of 2.24 mWh cm-3 at a current density of 6.0 mA cm-2. This work opens a new opportunity for the development of high-performance electrodes in unfavorable electrolytes towards designing high areal-capacitance electrode materials for supercapacitors and beyond.

H0.92K0.08TiNbO5 Nanowires Enabling High-Performance Lithium-Ion Uptake

HTiNbO₅ has been widely investigated in many fields because of its distinctive properties such as good redox activity, high photocatalytic activity, and environmental benignancy. Here, this work reports the synthesis of one-dimensional H_0.92K_0.08TiNbO₅ nanowires via simple electrospinning followed by an ion-exchange reaction. The H_0.92K_0.08TiNbO₅ nanowires consist of many small "lumps" with a uniform diameter distribution of around 150 nm. Used as an anode for lithium-ion batteries, H_0.92K_0.08TiNbO₅ nanowires exhibit high capacity, fast electrochemical kinetics, and high performance of lithium-ion uptake. A capacity of 144.1 mA h g^-1 can be carried by H_0.92K_0.08TiNbO₅ nanowires at 0.5 C in the initial charge, and even after 150 cycles, the reversible capacity can remain at 123.7 mA h g^-1 with an excellent capacity retention of 85.84%. For H_0.92K_0.08TiNbO₅ nanowires, the diffusion coefficient of lithium ions is 1.97 × 10^-11 cm² s^-1, which promotes the lithium-ion uptake effectively. The outstanding electrochemical performance is ascribed to its morphology and the formation of a stable phase during cycling. In addition, the in situ X-ray diffraction and ex situ transmission electron microscopy techniques are applied to reveal its lithium storage mechanism, which proves the structure stability and electrochemical reversibility, thus achieving high-performance lithium-ion uptake. All these advantages demonstrate that H_0.92K_0.08TiNbO₅ nanowires can be a possible alternative anode material for rechargeable batteries.