Influence of Microstucture on the Charge Storage Properties of Chemically Synthesized Manganese Dioxide

Α-MnO2 was synthesized by a very simple coprecipitation technique and tested as active electrode material for an electrochemical supercapacitor. The powder presents a poorly crystallized cryptomelane phase with a chemical composition of K0.05MnO2H0.10·0.15H2O. Different aqueous electrolytes were tested including 0.1 M Na2SO4, 0.5 M K2HPO4/KH2PO4 buffer solution, 0.3 M H2SO4, and 1 M NaOH, but interesting pseudocapacitance behavior was only observed in the case of 0.1 M Na2SO4. Further testing using this electrolyte showed that an average capacitance of 166 F/g can be reproducibly obtained within a voltage range −0.4/+0.5 V vs Hg/Hg2SO4 using a sweep rate of 2 mV/s. This interesting value is mainly due to the…