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Double diamond structured bicontinuous mesoporous titania templated by a block copolymer for anode material of lithium-ion battery

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Abstract

Titania has received considerable attention as a promising anode material of Li-ion battery (LIB). Controlling the structure and morphology of titania nanostructures is crucial to govern their performance. Herein, we report a mesoporous titania scaffold with a bicontinuous shifted double diamond (SDD) structure for anode material of LIB. The titania scaffold was synthesized by the cooperative self-assembly of a block copolymer poly(ethylene oxide)-block-polystyrene template and titanium diisopropoxide bis(acetylacetonate) as the inorganic precursor in a mixture solvent of tetrahydrofuran and HCl/water. The structure shows tetragonal symmetry (space group I41/amd) comprising two sets of diamond networks adjoining each other with the unit cell parameter of a = 90 nm and c = 127 nm, which affords the porous titania a specific surface area (SSA) of 42 m2·g−1 with a mean pore diameter of 38 nm. Serving as an anode material of LIB, the bicontinuous titania scaffold exhibits a high specific capacity of 254 mAh·g−1 at the current density of 1 A·g−1 and an alluring self-improving feature upon charge/discharge over 1,000 cycles. This study overcomes the difficulty in building up ordered bicontinuous functional materials and demonstrates their potential in energy storage application.

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Acknowledgements

The authors appreciate the Instrumental Analysis Center at Shanghai Jiao Tong University for some analyses. The authors are also grateful for the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 21774076, 21922304, 21873072, and 52073173), the Program of the Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (No. 17JC1403200), the Program of Shanghai Academic Research Leader (No. 19XD1421700), the Program of Shanghai Eastern Scholar and Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (No. 18ZR1442400).

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  1. Qingqing Sheng and Qian Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Frontiers Science Center for Transformative Molecules, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Electrical Insulation and Thermal Ageing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Qingqing Sheng, Qian Li, Luoxing Xiang, Tao Huang & Yiyong Mai

  2. School of Chemical Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Lu Han

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  1. Qingqing Sheng
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Double diamond structured bicontinuous mesoporous titania templated by a block copolymer for anode material of lithium-ion battery

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Sheng, Q., Li, Q., Xiang, L. et al. Double diamond structured bicontinuous mesoporous titania templated by a block copolymer for anode material of lithium-ion battery. Nano Res. 14, 992–997 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3139-4

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