MnO Stabilized in Carbon-Veiled Multivariate Manganese Oxides as High-Performance Cathode Material for Aqueous Zn-Ion Batteries

Aqueous Zn-ion battery has emerged as one of the most prospective energy storage devices due to its low cost, high safety, and eco-friendliness. However, Zn-ion batteries are bottlenecked by significant capacity fading during long-term cycling and poor performance at high current rates. Here, we report an available cooperation of multivariate manganese oxides@carbon hybrids (MnO₂/MnO@C and MnO₂/Mn₃O₄@C) via a plasma-assisted design as an attractive Zn-ion cathode. Among them, the MnO₂/MnO@C cathode exhibits a reversible specific capacity of 165 mAh g⁻¹ over 200 cycles at a high rate of 0.5 A g⁻¹, and possesses great rate performance with high capacities of 110 and 100 mAh g⁻¹ at a high rate of 0.8 and 1 A g⁻¹, respectively. The good cathode performance significantly results from the facile charge transfer and ions (Zn²⁺ and H⁺) insertion in the manganese oxides/carbon hybrids featuring phase stability behavior in the available cooperation of multivalence and carbon conductive substrates. This work will promote the Zn-manganese dioxide system for the design of low-cost and high-performance aqueous rechargeable Zn-ion batteries.