Novel mesoporous nano-titania/carbon composite electrodes for electrochemical energy storage

摘要

The development of novel scalable nanoscale materials and fabrication techniques for high performance TiO₂ Li-ion electrodes is investigated in this thesis. The development and study of the novel fabrication methods is approached from the stand point of a binder-free electrode, and its comparison to standard binder-basedelectrodes, making use of commercial P25 TiO₂ product as active material. The characterization of novel titania synthesized by manipulating the parameters of anaqueous process, is performed for two phases of TiO₂, namely anatase and brookite, based on comprehensive nanocrystal morphological and electrochemical property assessment. Finally all is brought together by investigating the application of the novel fabrication protocol to the aqueous synthesized anatase to engineer binderfree 3-dimensional electrodes, and studying their Li-ion intercalation performance. The fabrication of binder-free P25 nanotitania/carbon composite electrodes is pursued via formulating pastes and controlled sintering yielding enhanced electrochemical performance in comparison to standard binder-based methods using thesame active and conductive components. The new paste formulation and sintering sequence provides a significant increase in dispersion of carbon due to smaller agglomerate size resulting in enhanced inter-particle (active-conduction) mixing and packing density than standard binder-based electrodes. [...]