Manganese reduction/oxidation reaction on graphene composites as a reversible process for storing enormous energy at a fast rate

TL;DR

This paper introduces a manganese reduction/oxidation reaction on graphene composites that enables a high-capacity, fast-charging, reversible energy storage system, significantly surpassing traditional oxygen reactions in efficiency and energy density.

Contribution

It reports a novel manganese-based reaction on graphene composites for energy storage, achieving high capacity, fast kinetics, and high reversibility, and develops a rechargeable manganese ion battery with superior performance.

Findings

High capacity of 4200 mAh/g

Fast kinetics with 0.0024 cm2/s

Energy density of 1200 Wh/Kg

Abstract

Oxygen reduction/evolution reaction (ORR/OER) is a basic process for fuel cells or metal air batteries. However, ORR/OER generally requires noble metal catalysts and suffers from low solubility (10-3 molar per liter) of O2, low kinetics rate (10-6 cm2/s) and low reversibility. We report a manganese reduction/oxidation reaction (MRR/MOR) on graphene/MnO2 composites, delivering a high capacity (4200 mAh/g), fast kinetics (0.0024 cm2/s, three orders higher than ORR/OER), high solubility (three orders than O2), and high reversibility (100%). We further use MRR/MOR to invent a rechargeable manganese ion battery (MIB), which delivers an energy density of 1200 Wh/Kg (several times of lithium ion battery), a fast charge ability (3 minutes), and a long cycle life (10,000 cycles). MRR/MOR renders a new class of energy conversion or storage systems with a very high energy density enabling electric vehicles run much more miles at one charge.