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

Titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) 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 TiO 2 is significantly improved by elaborately fabricating hierarchical structures. These as-prepared four hierarchical structure TiO 2 assembled by different building blocks (TO 2 -2 h, TO 2 -6 h, TO 2 -18 h and TO 2 -24 h) all exhibit impressed performance. More importantly, the TO 2 -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 TiO 2 electrodes, and the electrochemical performance of hierarchical structure TiO 2 is heavily dependent on its building blocks. It is suggested that thus excellent electrochemical performance may make TiO 2 -6 h a promising anode material for advanced lithium-ion batteries with high capacity, good rate capability and long life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]