Surface Corrosion Engineering Endows Mn-Doped NiCo₂O₄ Nanosheets with High Capacity and Long Life for Alkaline Zn-Based Batteries

NiCo2O4 for alkaline Zn-based batteries (AZBs) suffers from low capacity and an unsatisfactory cycling life. Meanwhile, the widespread application of NiCo2O4 is seriously limited by costly and tedious synthetic procedures. In this work, a facile and economically efficient surface corrosion strategy is demonstrated to fabricate a high-performance Mn-doped NiCo2O4 (SMNC) nanosheet cathode for AZBs. Compares to the undoped NiCo2O4 (SNC), the SMNC shows enhanced mass transfer ability and increased active sites. Consequently, the Zn/SMNC cell reaches a big areal capacity of 0.58 mA h cm–2 at 2 mA cm–2 as well as an ultralong cycle life with 95% capacity retention over 6000 cycles. This work provides an effective, low-cost, and method to prepare advanced cathode materials for AZBs.