Constructing metal organic framework derived manganese cobalt layered double hydroxide nanosheets on Ni foam as cost-effective binder-free electrodes of high-performance supercapacitors

A vital aspect of energy storage devices is the development of novel materials with excellent electrical conductivity and rational structures. In combination with alkaline electrolytes, the manganese-cobalt layered double hydroxide (MnCo-LDH) cathode material has long been recognized as a highly desirable cathode material. Nevertheless, the synthesis of MnCo-LDH is time-consuming and required high temperatures. Therefore, it is important to find simple routes for the synthesis of MnCo-LDH. Herein, we propose a synthesis of metal organic framework (MOF)-derived MnCo-LDH nanosheets on conductive nickel foam (NF) for the supercapacitor (SC) application. The CoMOF decorated NF was fabricated by simple precipitation method, and then it was converted to MnCo-LDH by etching process at 80 °C for 5 min (MnCo-LDH/80 °C). The MOF-derived MnCo-LDH/80 °C electrode provides large accessible regions for electrolytes, low charge transfer resistance, and rich electroactive sites. Therefore, the MnCo-LDH/80 °C electrode demonstrates preferable energy storage property with a high areal capacitance of 2.62 F/cm2 at 20 mV/s. In this study, an asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) is constructed using MnCo-LDH/80 °C and activated carbon (AC) on NF as the positive and negative electrodes, respectively. The optimized MnCo-LDH//AC device provides the maximum energy of 0.116 mWh/cm2 at the maximum power density of 2.49 mW/cm2. Added to that, the ASC has excellent cyclic stability with 78% as the capacitance retention and Coulombic efficiency of 94.3% after 5000 charge-discharge cycles.