Experimental and Computational Analysis of MnO@VC-MXene for Enhanced Energy Storage.

Herein, we studied the novel and emerging group of 2D materials namely MXene along with its nanocomposites. This work entails detailed experimental as well as computational study of the electrochemical behavior of vanadium carbide (VCT) MXene and MnO-VC nanocomposite with varying percentages of MnO. A specific capacitance of 551.8 F/g was achieved for MnO-VC nanocomposite in 1 M KOH electrolyte solution, which is more than two times higher than the gravimetric capacitance of 196.5 F/g obtained for VC. The cyclic stability achieved for the MnO-VC nanocomposite resulted in a retentivity of 96.5% until 5000 cycles. The c-lattice parameter achieved for MXene is 22.6 Å, which was 13.01 Å for MAX phase. The nanocomposite resulted in a c-lattice parameter of 27.2 Å, which showed that the spatial distance between the MXene layers was efficiently obtained. The method of wet etching was used for the preparation of pristine MXene and the liquid phase precipitation method was opted for the synthesis of the MnO-VC nanocomposite. Density functional theory calculation was exercised so as to complement the experimental results and to understand the microscopic details, such as structure stability and electronic structure. The current report presents a comprehensive experimental and computational study on 2D MXenes for future energy storage applications.