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).