RGO/Manganese Silicate/MOF-derived carbon Double-Sandwich-Like structure as the cathode material for aqueous rechargeable Zn-ion batteries

Xueying Dong; Jingjing Sun; Yang Mu; Yuting Yu; Tao Hu; Cui Miao; Chi Huang; Changgong Meng; Yifu Zhang

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2021.11.137

RGO/Manganese Silicate/MOF-derived carbon Double-Sandwich-Like structure as the cathode material for aqueous rechargeable Zn-ion batteries

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2022 Mar 15:610:805-817. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.11.137. Epub 2021 Nov 25.

Authors

Xueying Dong¹, Jingjing Sun¹, Yang Mu¹, Yuting Yu², Tao Hu¹, Cui Miao¹, Chi Huang³, Changgong Meng¹, Yifu Zhang⁴

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, PR China.
² Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, Co., LTD Wuhan 430070, PR China. Electronic address: yuting.yu@qq.com.
³ College of Chemistry and Molecular Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China; Hubei Key Laboratory of Advanced Aerospace Propulsion Technology, Hubei Military-Civilian Integration and Co-Innovation Center of Aerospace Propulsion and Materials Technology, Wuhan 430072, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Fine Chemicals, School of Chemical Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, PR China. Electronic address: yfzhang@dlut.edu.cn.

PMID: 34863540
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2021.11.137

Abstract

Aqueous rechargeable Zn-ion batteries (ARZIBs) have been attracting a great deal of attention due to their immense potential in large-scale power grid applications. It is of great significance to explore cathode material with novel designed structure and first-class performances for ARZIBs. Herein, we successfully construct a double-sandwich-like structure, MOF-derived carbon/manganese silicate/reduced graphene oxide/manganese silicate/MOF-derived carbon (denoted as rGO/MnSi/MOF-C), as the cathode material for ARZIBs. Among the double-sandwich-like structure, manganese silicate (Mn₂SiO₄, denoted as MnSi) is in the middle of internal reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and external MOF-8 derived carbon (MOF-C). This integrated rGO/MnSi/MOF-C with double-sandwich-like structure can not only avert the sluggish electronic conduction progress caused by the conventional three-phase mixture system of rGO, MnSi and MOF-C, but also display promising Zn²⁺ storing capability. As expected, in mild aqueous 2 M (mol L^-1) ZnSO₄ + 0.2 M MnSO₄ electrolyte, the initial discharge capacity of rGO/MnSi/MOF-C cathode reaches to 246 mAh·g^-1, and the peak discharge capacity reaches to 462 mAh·g^-1 at 0.1 A·g^-1. This work not only involves the novel MnSi-based cathode for ARZIBs, but also first demonstrates our assumption of constructing the double-sandwich-like structure to improve Zn²⁺ storage. Moreover, the concept "double-sandwich-like structure" provides an idea for synthesizing the integrated carbon/transition metal silicates (TMSs)/carbon structure to boost the electrochemical properties of TMSs for energy-storing devices.

Keywords: Aqueous Zn-ion batteries; Cathode material; Double-sandwich-like; Electrochemical properties; Manganese silicate.