Ti n O2 n-1 Suboxide Phases in TiO2/C Nanocomposites Engineered by Non-hydrolytic Sol-Gel with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Properties

Shuxian Zou; Romain Berthelot; Bruno Boury; Pierre Hubert Mutin; Nicolas Brun

doi:10.3390/nano10091789

Ti _n O_{2 n-1} Suboxide Phases in TiO₂/C Nanocomposites Engineered by Non-hydrolytic Sol-Gel with Enhanced Electrocatalytic Properties

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2020 Sep 9;10(9):1789. doi: 10.3390/nano10091789.

Authors

Shuxian Zou¹, Romain Berthelot¹, Bruno Boury¹, Pierre Hubert Mutin¹, Nicolas Brun¹

Affiliation

¹ ICGM, Univ Montpellier, CNRS, ENSCM, Montpellier, France.

Abstract

We report a non-hydrolytic sol-gel (NHSG) route to engineer original mesoporous Ti_nO_2n-1@TiO₂/C nanocomposites. The synthetic approach is straightforward, solvent-free, additive-free, and meets the challenge of atom economy, as it merely involves TiCl₄ and THF in stoichiometric amounts. We found that these nanocomposites present enhanced electrocatalytic properties towards the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) in 0.1 M KOH. We believe that these preliminary results will open a window of opportunity for the design of metal suboxides/carbon nanocomposites through NHSG routes.

Keywords: ORR; atom-economic synthesis; carbothermal reduction; electrocatalysis; magnéli phases; nanocomposite; nanocrystal; nanostructure; non-hydrolytic sol-gel; titanium suboxide.