Electrospun nanofibers of manganese oxides with mixed phase for supercapacitor

Abstract

Electrospinning technique produces continuous fibers of various structures and composition with diameters ranging from a few micrometers to nanometers. Particularly, the three-dimensional (3D) non-woven fiber matrix contains a large porous network structure which is highly suitable for electrode applications that can facilitate the access of electrolytes into the active species. For that, we have fabricated the inorganic manganese oxide (MnOx) nanofibers (NFs) of varying composition by electrospinning technique for supercapacitor applications. MnOx is promising for pseudocapacitor due to their fine specific capacitance, low cost, and environmental benignity. In this study, we prepared the electrospun NFs of Mn(OAc)2/poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) composite by using electrospinning technique. The as-prepared inorganic NFs were annealed at different temperatures to remove the polymer matrix and resulted in the MnOx NFs of varying composition. Interestingly, we found that the capacitance of MnOx NFs annealed at 500 oC is highest among all samples with contained a mixed phase of Mn2O3 and Mn3O4.