Abstract:
Manganese oxide (MnO) is regarded as a highly promising anode material for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to its high theoretical specific capacity (756 mAh/g), low cost, and natural abundance. Nevertheless, MnO anode suffers from intrinsic drawbacks including inferior conductivity, structural instability, and significant volume expansion, resulting in low initial coulombic efficiency, poor rate and cycling performance. To address these challenges, a facile hydrothermal self-assembly strategy is proposed herein. Using manganese acetylacetonate as the Mn source, a hydrangea-like organic carbon-coated Mn-based precursor intercalated with MXene-Ti
3C
2T
x layers is synthesized, followed by calcination to obtain MnO@Ti
3C
2T
x composites with robust interfacial bonding (Mn—O—Ti). This hierarchical architecture synergistically enhances the charge transport efficiency and structural stability of MnO, suppresses volume expansion, and exposes abundant electroactive sites, thereby significantly improving the lithium storage performance. As a LIB anode, the optimized MnO@Ti
3C
2T
x delivers an initial Coulombic efficiency of 73.71% at 0.1 A/g and achieves a high reversible capacity of 997.38 mAh/g after activation. Notably, it retains 95.11% capacity retention after 100 cycles, demonstrating exceptional cycling stability. Even under a high current density of 2 A/g, it maintains a reversible capacity of 552.36 mAh/g over 300 cycles, far surpassing that of Ti
3C
2T
x-free MnO. This work provides a novel strategy for the controllable fabrication of high-performance Mn-based anode materials.