Carbon nanotube-supported mixed-valence $\mathrm{Mn}_{3} \mathrm{O}_{4}$ electrodes for high-performance lithium-oxygen batteries

Abstract

Lithium-oxygen batteries (LOBs) have extensive applications because of their ultra-high energy densities. However, the practical application of LOBs is limited by several factors, such as a high overpotential, poor cycle stability, and limited rate capacity. In this paper, we describe the successful uniform loading of Mn₃O₄ nanoparticles onto multi-walled carbon nanotubes (Mn₃O₄@CNT). CNTs form a conductive network and expose numerous catalytically active sites, and the one-dimensional porous structure provides a convenient channel for the transmission of Li⁺ and O₂ in LOBs. The electronic conductivity and electrocatalytic activity of Mn₃O₄@CNT are significantly better than those of MnO@CNT because of the inherent driving force facilitating charge transfer between different valence metal ions. Therefore, the Mn₃O₄@CNT cathode obtains a low overpotential (0.76 V at a limited capacity of 1000 mAh g⁻¹), high initial discharge capacity (16895 mAh g⁻¹ at 200 mA g⁻¹), and long cycle life (97 cycles at 200 mA g⁻¹). This study provides evidence that transition metal oxides with mixed-valence states are suitable for application as efficient cathodes for LOBs.

Keywords

Mixed-valence states / Carbon nanotube / Electrode reaction kinetics / Lithium-oxygen batteries

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge financial support from the Nature Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant No: ZR2019BEM019) and Future Plans of Young Scholars at Shandong University.

Supplementary materials

Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.chphma.2023.03.002.

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