Highly efficient mass determination of TiO2 nanotube arrays and its application in lithium-ion batteries

Anodized TiO2 nanotube arrays (TiO2 NTs) have been widely studied in energy storage devices due to their unique morphologies and stable physicochemical properties. However, there were little effective methods to measure the exact mass loading of TiO2 NTs, and less attention was paid to the correlation between the structure of TiO2 NTs and their mass loading, which directly affected Li+ insertion/extraction performances. Herein, we design an ICP-weighing method to easily determine the mass loading of TiO2 NTs via tracing the Ti element in the electrolyte and the mass change of Ti foil, and study the influence of TiO2 NTs' mass loading on the electrochemical performance. After optimization, 40 V sample presents high capacity and stability, with a reasonable TiO2 compact layer mass ratio (mTiO2 compact layer/mTiO2 NTs ≈ 0.14) and wall thickness of 21.44 nm. This new strategy is also adaptable for other anodized valve metals' (Ta, Al, Zr foil/mesh/wire etc.) mass determination Synopsis: ICP-weighing method provides a more efficient way to measure the mass loading of TiO2 NTs which is a promising candidate in lithium-ion batteries. [Display omitted]