Effect of Ti3AlC2 precursor on the electrochemical properties of the resulting MXene Ti3C2 for Li-ion batteries

The presented work compared the etching behavior between combustion synthesized Ti3AlC2 (SHS-Ti3AlC2) and pressureless synthesized Ti3AlC2 (PLS-Ti3AlC2). Because the former had a more compact structure, it was harder to be etched than PLS-Ti3AlC2 under the same conditions. When served as anode material for Li-ion batteries, SHS-Ti3C2 showed much lower capacity than PLS-Ti3C2 at 1 C (52.7 and 87.4 mAh g−1, respectively) due to the smaller d-spacing. Furthermore, Potentiostatic Intermittent Titration Technique (PITT) was used to determine the Li-ion chemical diffusion coefficient (DLi+) of Ti3C2 in the range of 10−10 − 10−9 cm2 s−1, indicating that Ti3C2 could exhibit an excellent diffusion mobility for Li-ion.