title: Floating growth of large-scale freestanding TiO2 nanorod films at the gas-liquid interface for additive-free Li-ion battery applications.
abstract: The floating growth process of large-scale freestanding TiO2 nanorod films at the gas-liquid interface was investigated. On the basis of the experiments, a self-templated growth scenario was developed to account for the self-assembly process. In the scenario, titanium complexes function not only as the Ti source for the growth of TiO2 but also as a soft template provider for the floating growth. According to the scenario, several new recipes of preparing freestanding TiO2 nanorod films at the gas-liquid interface were developed. The freestanding film was applied to a lithium ion battery as a binder-free and conducting agent-free anode, and good cyclability was obtained. This work may pave a new way to floating and freestanding TiO2 and other semiconductor materials, which has great potential not only in basic science but also in the applications such as materials engineering, Li-ion battery, photocatalyst, dye-sensitized solar cell, and flexible electronics.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for the Physics and Chemistry of Nanodevices, ‡Department of Electronics, ⊥School of Software and Microelectronics, §Academy for Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Peking University , Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Hua-Rong
authors.initials: HR
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Chen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.forename: Wen-Tao
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Long-Wei
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Lian-Mao
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Peng
keywords: Li-ion battery; binder-free; floating; freestanding; gas−liquid interface; self-templated