Hydrothermal synthesis of nano-sized MnO2 supported on attapulgite electrode materials for supercapacitors

Among the electrode materials of supercapacitors , transition metal oxides have been widely used because of their low price, high theoretical capacitance and good cycle stability, and MnO 2 is one of the typical representative materials. However, the actual specific capacitance of MnO 2 is low because of its poor conductivity, easy agglomeration in the preparation process and large volume change in the process of repeated charge and discharge. Attapulgite can not only provide a large specific surface area for transition metal oxide materials, but also provide a skeleton on which nano-sized materials can be grown or dispersed. Therefore, the electrochemical performance of electrode materials can be improved by designing nanostructures and compounding a variety of materials with different properties. Herein, a new type of composites electrode material is prepared by simple one-step hydrothermal method . As an electrode material, the ATP-MnO 2 composites exhibited a high specific capacitance of 138.2 F/g at a current density of 0.5 A/g, which was 13.4% higher than that of pure MnO 2 nanoflowers . Under the current density of 3 A/g, the capacitance retention of ATP-MnO 2 composites was 89.4% after 5000 cycles.