MnO/Mn₂O₃ Nanowires Coated by Porous N-Doped Carbon for Long-Cycle and High-Rate Lithium-Ion Batteries

Manganese oxides with versatile valence display an enormous potential in lithium-ion battery (LIB) anode materials, but deficient lithium storage capacity, short discharge platform, and inferior cycle stability at high current density greatly hinder their application. Herein, MnO/Mn2O3 nanowires coated by porous N-doped carbon (MnO/Mn2O3–NC) layers are fabricated via wrapping ZIF-8 on MnO2 combined with annealing postprocessing. In the LIB test, this material exhibits superior initial discharge specific capability (1429.4 mAh g–1 at 0.1 A g–1) and improved rate performance retention of 65% (10-fold amplification from 0.5 to 5 A g–1). Particularly, up to an ultrahigh current density of 10 A g–1, this anode material also possesses great cycling stability of 87% after 10 000 cycles (merely 0.0013% capacity decay per cycle), which is the best among the reported values for Mn-based compounds. On the basis of experiment data and density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the superior stability for the MnO/Mn2O3–NC anode is mainly attributed to the mutual support characteristics of heterojunction synergy, thus avoiding damage and vice versa during the energy storage process. Generally, our work proposes a special nanostructure with heterojunction synergy to ameliorate the cycling stability and rate performance of manganese-based materials.