Lithium-ion battery anode active material and lithium-ion battery containing the same

High-Capacity Anode Composite Featuring Needle-like Rutile Nanostructures Grown on Porous Reduced Titania Cores

This technology involves the design and fabrication of a hybrid composite that combines a highly conductive porous reduced titania (TiO) core with needle-like rutile titania (r-TiO2) nanostructures, which are favorable for lithium intercalation.

Conventional anatase TiO2 anode materials suffer from low electrical conductivity and slow lithium-ion diffusion rates. Furthermore, their narrow operating potential window results in actual capacities that fall significantly short of theoretical limits, leading to low energy density.

This technology utilizes a magnesium thermal reduction process to create porous TiO, followed by acid treatment to grow needle-like r-TiO2 nanostructures in-situ on the surface. This creates a composite with heterogeneous oxidation states—a Ti2+ core and a Ti4+ surface—enabling the simultaneous use of pseudocapacitance and intercalation reactions. Applicable to batteries for power tools and hybrid vehicles requiring rapid charging, as well as high-power lithium-ion capacitors, this approach overcomes capacity limitations while maintaining the inherent safety of titania anodes.

‍

‍

Key Features:

• Porous particles comprising reduced titania represented by TiO2-x (0.1≤x<2), forming the conductive core of the composite
• Needle-like rutile-phase titania nanostructures formed at least partially on the surface of the porous particles
• A step of heat-treating a mixture of titania and a metal such as Mg in a weight ratio of 1:2 to 3:1 to produce reduced titania (TiO2-x)
• A step of acid-treating the metal-etched reduced titania to form titania on at least a portion of the surface

‍