Nitrogen-Enriched Porous Carbon Coating for Manganese Oxide Nanostructures toward High-Performance Lithium-Ion Batteries

Manganese oxides are promising high-capacity anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) yet suffer from short cycle life and poor rate capability. Herein, we demonstrate a facile in situ interfacial synthesis of core-shell heterostructures comprising nitrogen-enriched porous carbon (pN-C) nanocoating and manganese oxide (MnOx) nanotubes. When MnOx/pN-C serves as an anode material for LIBs, the pN-C coating plays multiple roles in substantially improving the lithium storage performance. In combination with the nanosized structure and nanotubular architecture, the MnOx/pN-C nanocomposites exhibit an impressive reversible capacity of 1068 mAh g(-1) at 100 mA g(-1), a high-rate delivery of 361 mAh g(-1) at 8 A g(-1), and a stable cycling retention up to 300 cycles. The surface pN-C coating strategy can be extended to design and fabricate various metal oxide nanostructures for high-performance LIBs.