Enhancing the performance of manganous oxide nanoparticles for lithium storage by in-situ construction of porous carbon embedment

Abstract

Although having high theoretical capacity, manganous oxide (MnO) still faces challenges for application in anodes of lithium-ion batteries because of its notorious shortcomings such as enormous volume change and poor conductivity. Herein, a facile and relatively green strategy has been demonstrated to efficiently mitigate above issues, that is, in-situ embedding MnO nanoparticles into a porous carbon matrix by a NaCl template method. The well-designed porous carbon matrix enhances not only conductivity but also structural stability of the as-prepared MnO/C composite electrode during cyclic charge/discharge process. As a consequence, this MnO/C composite, evaluated as an anode of lithium-ion batteries, shows improved performance with 1501 and 1277 mAh g−1 after 180 and 250 cycles at 200 and even 1000 mA g−1, respectively. Moreover, this effective strategy may increase the margin of facile and green preparation of other high-performance metal oxide-based anodes for lithium-ion batteries.