Elaborately prepared hierarchical structure titanium dioxide for remarkable performance in lithium storage

Titanium dioxide (TiO2) has been considered to be a promisingly alternative anode material for lithium-ion batteries and thus attracted wide research interest. But, its practical application in lithium-ion batteries is seriously impeded by low capacity and poor rate capability. In the present work, the electrochemical performance of TiO2 is significantly improved by elaborately fabricating hierarchical structures. These as-prepared four hierarchical structure TiO2 assembled by different building blocks (TO2-2 h, TO2-6 h, TO2-18 h and TO2-24 h) all exhibit impressed performance. More importantly, the TO2-6 h constructed by curved nanosheets exhibits the best performance, delivering a capacity of 231.6 mAh g−1 at 0.2C after 200 cycles, and capacities of 187.1 and 129.3 mAh g−1 at 1 and 10C after even 1200 cycles, respectively. The results indicated that design and fabrication of hierarchical structure is an effective strategy for significantly improving the electrochemical performance of TiO2 electrodes, and the electrochemical performance of hierarchical structure TiO2 is heavily dependent on its building blocks. It is suggested that thus excellent electrochemical performance may make TiO2-6 h a promising anode material for advanced lithium-ion batteries with high capacity, good rate capability and long life.