Experimental and Computational Analysis of MnO₂@V₂C-MXene for Enhanced Energy Storage

Herein, we studied the novel and emerging group of 2D materials namely MXene along with its nanocomposites. This work entails detailed experimental as well as computational study of the electrochemical behavior of vanadium carbide (V₂CT) MXene and MnO₂-V₂C nanocomposite with varying percentages of MnO₂. A specific capacitance of 551.8 F/g was achieved for MnO₂-V₂C nanocomposite in 1 M KOH electrolyte solution, which is more than two times higher than the gravimetric capacitance of 196.5 F/g obtained for V₂C. The cyclic stability achieved for the MnO₂-V₂C nanocomposite resulted in a retentivity of 96.5% until 5000 cycles. The c-lattice parameter achieved for MXene is 22.6 Å, which was 13.01 Å for MAX phase. The nanocomposite resulted in a c-lattice parameter of 27.2 Å, which showed that the spatial distance between the MXene layers was efficiently obtained. The method of wet etching was used for the preparation of pristine MXene and the liquid phase precipitation method was opted for the synthesis of the MnO₂-V₂C nanocomposite. Density functional theory calculation was exercised so as to complement the experimental results and to understand the microscopic details, such as structure stability and electronic structure. The current report presents a comprehensive experimental and computational study on 2D MXenes for future energy storage applications.