Facile coating of manganese oxide on tin oxide nanowires with high-performance capacitive behavior

Abstract

In this paper, a very simple solution-based method is employed to coat amorphous MnO2 onto crystalline SnO2 nanowires grown on stainless steel substrate, which utilizes the better electronic conductivity of SnO2 nanowires as the supporting backbone to deposit MnO2 for supercapacitor electrodes. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge/discharge methods have been carried out to study the capacitive properties of the SnO2/MnO2 composites. A specific capacitance (based on MnO2) as high as 637 F g−1 is obtained at a scan rate of 2 mV s−1 (800 F g−1 at a current density of 1 A g−1) in 1 M Na2SO4 aqueous solution. The energy density and power density measured at 50 A g−1 are 35.4 W h kg−1 and 25 kW kg−1, respectively, demonstrating the good rate capability. In addition, the SnO2/MnO2 composite electrode shows excellent long-term cyclic stability (less than 1.2% decrease of the specific capacitance is observed after 2000 CV cycles). The temperature-dependent capacitive behavior is also discussed. Such high-performance capacitive behavior indicates that the SnO2/MnO2 composite is a very promising electrode material for fabricating supercapacitors.