One-Step Synthesis of Titanium Oxyhydroxy-Fluoride Rods and Research on the Electrochemical Performance for Lithium-ion Batteries and Sodium-ion Batteries

Titanium oxyhydroxy-fluoride, TiO(0.9)(OH)(0.9)F(1.2) · 0.59H(2)O rods with a hexagonal tungsten bronze (HTB) structure, was synthesized via a facile one-step solvothermal method. The structure, morphology, and component of the products were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetry (TG), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution TEM (HRTEM), inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES), ion chromatograph, energy-dispersive X-ray (EDX) analyses, and so on. Different rod morphologies which ranged from nanoscale to submicron scale were simply obtained by adjusting reaction conditions. With one-dimension channels for Li/Na intercalation/de-intercalation, the electrochemical performance of titanium oxyhydroxy-fluoride for both lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) and sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) was also studied. Electrochemical tests revealed that, for LIBs, titanium oxyhydroxy-fluoride exhibited a stabilized reversible capacity of 200 mAh g(−1) at 25 mA g(−1) up to 120 cycles in the electrode potential range of 3.0–1.2 V and 140 mAh g(−1) at 250 mA g(−1) up to 500 cycles, especially; for SIBs, a high capacity of 100 mAh g(−1) was maintained at 25 mA g(−1) after 115 cycles in the potential range of 2.9–0.5 V.