Electrode Properties ofMn2O3Nanospheres Synthesized by Combined Sonochemical/Solvothermal Method for Use in Electrochemical Capacitors

Abstract

We report here an efficient single step combined sonochemical and solvothermal synthesis process to obtain bulk quantities of nanospherical particles of cubicMn2O3and characterized its pseudocapacitive characteristics in relevance to electrochemical capacitors for the first time. It has been found that quantitative determination of specific capacitance yielded a value of capacitance of∼100 Fg−1within 0–0.4 V (versus SCE) potential range in a 6 M KOH alkaline electrolyte. The as-prepared nanopowders after being subjected to heat treatment at 400°C were characterized by using XRD which shows a typical cubic single-phase structure (space groupIa-3), the broad crystalline peaks indicating the presence of explicit nanostructure. Electron microscopic studies (FE-SEM and TEM) revealed that the synthesized powders exhibit nanospherical morphology with uniform sphere-like grains of∼10–15 nm range. Two heat-treated samples were studied in the context of crystallinity versus electrochemical capacitance using rate-dependent cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in a three-electrode system. The excellent well-refined redox behavior corroborates with EIS measurements. The presence of near symmetric redox couple observed in CV has been attributed to pronounced one-electron-transfer process owing to the presence of facile Mn redox centers facilitating the reversible one-electron transfer that accounts for its pseudocapacitance.