Floating Growth of Large-Scale Freestanding TiO2 Nanorod Films at the Gas–Liquid Interface for Additive-Free Li-Ion Battery Applications

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces Vol. 6; no. 20; pp. 17376 - 17383
• Main Authors: Xia, Hua-Rong, Li, Jia, Peng, Chen, Sun, Wen-Tao, Li, Long-Wei, Peng, Lian-Mao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States American Chemical Society 22.10.2014
• Subjects: self-templated; floating; gas−liquid interface; Li-ion battery; freestanding; binder-free
• DOI: 10.1021/am504924w
• ISSN: 1944-8244

The floating growth process of large-scale freestanding TiO2 nanorod films at the gas–liquid interface was investigated. On the basis of the experiments, a self-templated growth scenario was developed to account for the self-assembly process. In the scenario, titanium complexes function not only as the Ti source for the growth of TiO2 but also as a soft template provider for the floating growth. According to the scenario, several new recipes of preparing freestanding TiO2 nanorod films at the gas–liquid interface were developed. The freestanding film was applied to a lithium ion battery as a binder-free and conducting agent-free anode, and good cyclability was obtained. This work may pave a new way to floating and freestanding TiO2 and other semiconductor materials, which has great potential not only in basic science but also in the applications such as materials engineering, Li-ion battery, photocatalyst, dye-sensitized solar cell, and flexible electronics.