Interconnected nanofibrous titanium dioxide bronze: an emerging lithium ion anode material for high rate performance

Here we report TiO2, in the bronze phase (TiO2-B), with a porous nanostructure designed for rapid lithium storage and charge transfer. A new synthesis method is described that not only facilitates these improvements, but also removes the requirement for an autoclave, which is usually common in the synthesis of this material. Most notably, peak capacities of 235, 148, and 66 mAh g−1 at 0.2 C, 20 C, and 100 C were attained, respectively. These results were achieved with low conductive carbon contents (5%). In addition, recent atomistic reports on TiO2-B were correlated with these results in order to explain how the morphology reported here was leveraged in order to attain high performance. Diffusion coefficients were also calculated for this novel TiO2-B architecture and found to be in good agreement with a previous study performed using NMR.