Electrochemical behavior of cubic titanium carbide for lithium-air batteries
QIN Zhen-hai, HUANG Hao, WU Ai-min, CHEN Ming-zhu, YANG Ying-ying, YAO Man
Key Laboratory of Materials Modification by Laser, Ion and Electron Beams(Ministry of Education), School of Materials Science and Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian 116024, Liaoning, China
Abstract：Titanium carbide(TiC)nanoparticles were synthesized in situ by direct current(DC)arc-discharge method under the mixture of methane and argon gas atmosphere. The physical characterization including X-ray diffraction(XRD)and transmission electron microscope(TEM)show that TiC nanoparticles have cubic structure with grain sizes of 40-90nm. Cyclic voltammetry(CV)measurement indicates that TiC nanoparticles are efficient bi-functional catalysts toward both oxygen reduction reaction(ORR)and oxygen evolution reaction (OER)for Li-O2 batteries, which can effectively compensate for the weak catalytic activity of OER of carbon materials. The results of galvanostatic charge-discharge measurement present that the TiC nanoparticles can reduce the charge-overpotential by 280mV compared to general carbon materials(Super-P), and the TiC electrode delivers an initial discharge capacity of 1267mAh·g-1 at 50mA·g-1. Even at a high current density of 150mA·g-1, the discharge capacity still maintains 778mAh·g-1, indicating excellent rate performance of lithium-air batteries with TiC nanoparticles as catalysts. The TiC electrode displays 10 cycles at a fixed capacity of 500mAh·g-1 and at a current density of 100mA·g-1.The characterization of XRD, Fourier transform infrared(FT-IR)and scanning electron microscopy(SEM)show that the formation and decomposition of Li2O2 have great reversibility under the bi-functional catalysis of TiC nanoparticles, which can significantly alleviate the accumulation of undesired byproducts, and eventually improve the electrochemical performance of Li-air batteries.
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2019, Vol. 47 
