Manganese oxide doping carbon aerogels prepared with MnO₂ coordinated by N, N - dimethylmethanamide for...

Carbon aerogels with excellent conductive characteristics and high specific capacitance have attracted more and more interests for next-generation energy storage applications. Three-dimensional interconnected Mn₂O₃/carbon aerogel supercapacitor electrodes are prepared by a novel doping method using MnO₂ coordinated by N, N-dimethylmethanamide (DMF). The coordinative MnO₂ (DMF/MnO₂) plays a key role in the sol-gel process of resorcinol and formaldehyde. The doped carbon aerogels exhibits a high specific surface area of 859 m² g^-1 and a good pore-size distribution of 10-15 nm. All of the doped carbon aerogels exhibit higher specific capacitance than pure carbon aerogels, and the highest specific capacitance (170 F g^-1), at current density of 1.0 A g^-1, is obtained in Mn-CA-5% when 5 mol% DMF/MnO₂ is added to the precursor solution. The specific capacitance is as high as 100 F g^-1, at current density of 10.0 A g^-1, and 97% of initial capacitance is retained over 1000 cycles at a current density of 5.0 A g^-1. The doped carbon aerogels exhibits a high coulombic efficiency (up to 99.8%) and a good rate capability. The corresponding result is due to the novel doping method of DMF/MnO₂ addition.