Biotemplate-Based Engineering of High-Temperature Stable Anatase TiO2 Nanofiber Bundles with Impregnated CeO2 Nanocrystals for Enhanced Lithium Storage

Abstract

Anatase TiO2 has been deemed as a potential anode material of lithium ion batteries (LIBs) due to its remarkable electrochemical properties, while efficient controlling of the anatase crystal structure is one of the critical approaches to realizing the practical applications of TiO2 anode materials. To this end, we report here a facile biotemplate-engaged design strategy to engineer high-temperature stable anatase TiO2 nanofiber bundles with impregnated CeO2 nanocrystals (TCBs) by taking the advantages of unique chemical and structural characteristics of collagen fibers (CF). CF is a natural biomacromolecule owning an ordered one-dimensional (1D) hierarchical fibrous structure with abundant active functional groups, which endow it with high reactivity of binding to multivalent Ti4+ and Ce4+ and also make it an ideal structural template to direct the formation of TCBs through a simple thermal pyrolysis. The results demonstrate that use of the 1D hierarchically structured CF as the template is able to imped...