Synthesis and characterization of MnO2 nanorods on multiwalled CNT for Li-O2 battery

In this work, MnO 2 nanorods were developed successfully and directly anchored on the surface of MWCNTs to assess the feasibility of the material developed for cathode application in Li-O 2 batteries. The structural and compositional features of the MnO 2 -MWCNT composite were systematically investigated through various instrumental analyses such as TEM and FE-SEM equipped with EDX. Furthermore, the X-ray diffraction (XRD) pattern was used to study the crystalline and phase of the developed composite. The following tests were made to characterize the electrochemical performance of the synthesized composite: cyclic voltammograms and rotating disk electrode measurements. In detail, the composite was characterized by RDE measurements with a scan rate of 10 mV/s and the oxygen reduction reaction examined by CV conducted at a rotation rate of 1600 rpm. The analysis highlighted strong synergistic effects between MnO 2 nanorods and MWCNTs, leading to the enhancement of capacitance characteristics of the Li-O 2 batteries. The improvement, mainly due to forming a binary material structure, was most apparent when comparing the uptake efficiency to that of MnO 2 nanoparticles and MnO 2 -incorporated carbon nanotubes for energy storage purposes.