Asymmetric supercapacitors based on electrospun carbon nanofiber/sodium-pre-intercalated manganese oxide electrodes with high power and energy densities

The sodium-pre-intercalated δ-MnO2 is in-situ grown on carbon nanofiber via a simple, one-step method for the application of asymmetric supercapacitors. The pre-intercalation of Na ions into the layered structure of δ-MnO2 reduces the crystallinity, beneficial to Na+ diffusion into/out the interlayer structure and pseudocapacitive utilization of MnO2. This NaxMnO2@CNF nanocomposite with desirable pseudo-capacitance from δ-NaxMnO2 and high electric conductivity from CNF network shows a high specific capacitance of 321 F g−1 at 1 A g−1 with ca. 75.2% capacitance retention from 1 to 32 A g−1. An ASC cell consisting of this nanocomposite and activated carbon as the positive and negative electrodes can be reversibly charged and discharged to a cell voltage of 2.0 V in 1 M Na2SO4 and 4 mM NaHCO3 with specific energy and power of 21 Wh kg−1 and 1 kW kg−1, respectively. This ASC also shows excellent cell capacitance retention (7% decay) in the 2 V, 10,000-cycle stability test, revealing superior performance.