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Nano Research 2021, 14(3): 684-691 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3097-x
Research Article | Issue | Published: 01 March 2021

A confinement strategy to in-situ prepare a peanut-like N-doped, C-wrapped TiO2 electrode with an enhanced desalination capacity and rate for capacitive deionization

Show Author's Information Mingxing Liang2,3,§,  Xueting Bai1,§,  Fei Yu1( ),  Jie Ma2,3,4( )
College of Marine Ecology and Environment, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai 201306, China
State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Research Center for Environmental Functional Materials, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, China
Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, Shanghai 200092, China

§ Mingxing Liang and Xueting Bai contributed equally to this work.

Keywords:
N-doped, capacitive deionization, confinement growth, MXene-derived, pseudocapacitive behavior
Topics:
CarbonDoping (additives)Electrochemical electrodesEnergy utilizationOxide mineralsParticle sizeTitanium Dioxide
Cite this article:
Liang M, Bai X, Yu F, et al. A confinement strategy to in-situ prepare a peanut-like N-doped, C-wrapped TiO2 electrode with an enhanced desalination capacity and rate for capacitive deionization. Nano Research, 2021, 14(3): 684-691. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-3097-x
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Abstract Full text Electronic supplementary material About this article

Capacitive deionization (CDI) technology has been considered a promising desalination technique, especially for brackish water, because of its relatively low energy consumption, facile operation, and easy regeneration of electrodes. However, the desalination capacity, cost, fabrication method, electrochemical stability, and environmental unfriendliness of the electrodes have restricted the practical application of the CDI technique. Herein, we reported the one-step in situ preparation of nitrogen-doped and carbon-decorated MXene-derived TiO2 (termed N-TiO2−x/C) through the confinement-growth strategy. The small particle size (~ 25 nm) and uniform distribution of a peanut-like N-TiO2−x/C material could be ascribed to the confined growth space created by the nanoporous structure of melamine foam. The defects produced by N doping provide an enhanced electrical conductivity and more adsorption sites, while wrapping with a carbon shell layer increases the conductivity and offers protection for N-TiO2−x to achieve an excellent electrochemical stability. The prepared N-TiO2−x/C electrode is hydrophilic due to the abundant oxygen-containing functional groups (e.g., C-O, N-Ti-O, -NOx, and -OH) and exhibits a high salt removal capacity (33.4 mg·g−1), desalination rate (1.5 mg·g−1·min−1), and remarkable cycling stability (without declining after 100 cycles), which might be ascribed to the synergistic effects of the short ion diffusion path, more active adsorption sites, enhanced conductivity, pseudocapacitive behavior, and protection of the carbon shell layer. This work provides a confined-growth strategy to develop MXene-derived oxide electrodes for electrochemical desalination.


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Abstract
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Electronic supplementary material
About this article

A confinement strategy to in-situ prepare a peanut-like N-doped, C-wrapped TiO2 electrode with an enhanced desalination capacity and rate for capacitive deionization

Show Author's information Mingxing Liang2,3,§, Xueting Bai1,§, Fei Yu1( ), Jie Ma2,3,4( )
College of Marine Ecology and Environment, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai 201306, China
State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Research Center for Environmental Functional Materials, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai 200092, China
Shanghai Institute of Pollution Control and Ecological Security, Shanghai 200092, China

§ Mingxing Liang and Xueting Bai contributed equally to this work.

Abstract

Capacitive deionization (CDI) technology has been considered a promising desalination technique, especially for brackish water, because of its relatively low energy consumption, facile operation, and easy regeneration of electrodes. However, the desalination capacity, cost, fabrication method, electrochemical stability, and environmental unfriendliness of the electrodes have restricted the practical application of the CDI technique. Herein, we reported the one-step in situ preparation of nitrogen-doped and carbon-decorated MXene-derived TiO2 (termed N-TiO2−x/C) through the confinement-growth strategy. The small particle size (~ 25 nm) and uniform distribution of a peanut-like N-TiO2−x/C material could be ascribed to the confined growth space created by the nanoporous structure of melamine foam. The defects produced by N doping provide an enhanced electrical conductivity and more adsorption sites, while wrapping with a carbon shell layer increases the conductivity and offers protection for N-TiO2−x to achieve an excellent electrochemical stability. The prepared N-TiO2−x/C electrode is hydrophilic due to the abundant oxygen-containing functional groups (e.g., C-O, N-Ti-O, -NOx, and -OH) and exhibits a high salt removal capacity (33.4 mg·g−1), desalination rate (1.5 mg·g−1·min−1), and remarkable cycling stability (without declining after 100 cycles), which might be ascribed to the synergistic effects of the short ion diffusion path, more active adsorption sites, enhanced conductivity, pseudocapacitive behavior, and protection of the carbon shell layer. This work provides a confined-growth strategy to develop MXene-derived oxide electrodes for electrochemical desalination.

Keywords: N-doped, capacitive deionization, confinement growth, MXene-derived, pseudocapacitive behavior

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Publication history
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Acknowledgements

Publication history

Received: 14 July 2020
Revised: 03 September 2020
Accepted: 06 September 2020
Published: 01 March 2021
Issue date: March 2021

Copyright

© Tsinghua University Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 21777118). We are also thankful to the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments for improving this manuscript.

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