Combined Structural, Chemometric, and Electrochemical Investigation of Vertically Aligned TiO(2) Nanotubes for Na-ion Batteries

[Image: see text] In the challenging scenario of anode materials for sodium-ion batteries, TiO(2) nanotubes could represent a winning choice in terms of cost, scalability of the preparation procedure, and long-term stability upon reversible operation in electrochemical cells. In this work, a detailed physicochemical, computational, and electrochemical characterization is carried out on TiO(2) nanotubes synthesized by varying growth time and heat treatment, viz. the two most significant experimental parameters during preparation. A chemometric approach is proposed to obtain a concrete and solid multivariate analysis of sodium battery electrode materials. Such a statistical approach, combined with prolonged galvanostatic cycling and density functional theory analysis, allows identifying anatase at high growth time as the TiO(2) polymorph of choice as an anode material, thus creating a benchmark for sodium-ion batteries, which currently took the center stage of the research in the field of energy storage systems from renewables.