Facile synthesis and electrochemical performance of TiO2 nanowires/Ti3C2 composite

A new type of TiO2 nanowires/two-dimensional MXene composite (TiO2 nw/Ti3C2) was synthesized by oxidation of Ti3C2 MXene in potassium hydroxide (KOH) solution at low temperature. Using this approach, numerous TiO2 nanowires with the length of 20-100 nm uniformly grow on the Ti3C2 sheets surface, which increase the surface areas and prevent the restacking of Ti3C2 sheets. Electrochemical testing results revealed that the as-prepared TiO2 nw/Ti3C2 nanocomposite can drastically improve the reversible capacity compared with pure Ti3C2. Remarkably, TiO2 nw/Ti3C2 nanocomposite shows high initial capacity of 768.7 mAh g(-1) at 100 mA g(-1) and the capacity can remain about 216.4 mAh g(-1) after 200 cycles, which is more than twice as much as that of Ti3C2 (98.3 mAh g(-1)).