Highly flexible supercapacitors with manganese oxide nanosheet/carbon cloth electrode

We report a simple and cost-effective synthesis of hierarchically porous structure composed of Birnessite-type manganese dioxide (MnO2) nanosheets on flexible carbon cloth (CC) via anodic electrodeposition technique. Petal-shaped MnO2, having sheet thickness of a few nm and typical width of 100 nm, with a strong adhesion on CC is observed. This hierarchically porous MnO2–CC hybrid structure dose exhibit not only excellent capacitance properties, such as up to 425 F g−1 in specific capacitance, but also high crack resistance owing to its efficient release of bending stress, as observed by cyclic voltammetry and galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements under different curvature of bending configurations. Furthermore, flexible supercapacitors based on this kind of MnO2 nanosheet/CC electrode showed significantly improved stability in capacitive performance over 3000 cycles under the bending test, which is highly promising for future applications in flexible energy storage device.

► A simple and cost-effective route was utilized to synthesize hierarchically porous structure composed of MnO2 nanosheets on flexible carbon cloth.
► The hierarchically porous MnO2–CC hybrid structure dose exhibit excellent specific capacitance of 425 F g−1.
► The flexibility of these MnO2 nanosheets consequently benefits the release of bending stress and showed significantly improved stability in capacitive performance over 3000 cycles under the bending test.