A Hollow-Structured Manganese Oxide Cathode for Stable Zn-MnO₂ Batteries

Xiaotong Guo; Jianming Li; Xu Jin; Yehu Han; Yue Lin; Zhanwu Lei; Shiyang Wang; Lianjie Qin; Shuhong Jiao; Ruiguo Cao

doi:10.3390/nano8050301

A Hollow-Structured Manganese Oxide Cathode for Stable Zn-MnO₂ Batteries

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2018 May 5;8(5):301. doi: 10.3390/nano8050301.

Authors

Xiaotong Guo¹, Jianming Li², Xu Jin³, Yehu Han⁴, Yue Lin⁵, Zhanwu Lei⁶, Shiyang Wang⁷, Lianjie Qin⁸, Shuhong Jiao⁹, Ruiguo Cao¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ School of Environmental and Materials Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai 264005, China. aguoxiaotong@hotmail.com.
² Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development (RIPED), PetroChina, Beijing 100083, China. lijm02@petrochina.com.cn.
³ Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development (RIPED), PetroChina, Beijing 100083, China. jinxu@petrochina.com.cn.
⁴ School of Environmental and Materials Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai 264005, China. ahanyehu@hotmail.com.
⁵ Hefei National Laboratory for physical Science at the Microscale, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. linyue@ustc.edu.cn.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. zwlei@mail.ustc.edu.cn.
⁷ Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. wangshiy@ustc.edu.cn.
⁸ School of Environmental and Materials Engineering, Yantai University, Yantai 264005, China. ljqin@ytu.edu.cn.
⁹ Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. jiaosh@pku.edu.cn.
¹⁰ Key Laboratory of Materials for Energy Conversion Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. rgcao@ustc.edu.cn.

Abstract

Aqueous rechargeable zinc-manganese dioxide (Zn-MnO₂) batteries are considered as one of the most promising energy storage devices for large scale-energy storage systems due to their low cost, high safety, and environmental friendliness. However, only a few cathode materials have been demonstrated to achieve stable cycling for aqueous rechargeable Zn-MnO₂ batteries. Here, we report a new material consisting of hollow MnO₂ nanospheres, which can be used for aqueous Zn-MnO₂ batteries. The hollow MnO₂ nanospheres can achieve high specific capacity up to ~405 mAh g^−1 at 0.5 C. More importantly, the hollow structure of birnessite-type MnO₂ enables long-term cycling stability for the aqueous Zn-MnO₂ batteries. The excellent performance of the hollow MnO₂ nanospheres should be due to their unique structural properties that enable the easy intercalation of zinc ions.

Keywords: hollow structure; manganese oxide; multivalent intercalation; zinc ion batteries.