Nitrogen-enriched porous carbon coating for manganese oxide nanostructures toward high-performance lithium-ion batteries

Manganese oxides are promising high-capacity anode materials for lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) yet suffer from short cycle life and poor rate capability. Herein, we demonstrate a facile in situ interfacial synthesis of core-shell heterostructures comprising nitrogen-enriched porous carbon (pN-C) nanocoating and manganese oxide (MnO_x) nanotubes. When MnO_x/pN-C serves as an anode material for LIBs, the pN-C coating plays multiple roles in substantially improving the lithium storage performance. In combination with the nanosized structure and nanotubular architecture, the MnO_x/pN-C nanocomposites exhibit an impressive reversible capacity of 1068 mAh g^-1 at 100 mA g^-1, a high-rate delivery of 361 mAh g^-1 at 8 A g^-1, and a stable cycling retention up to 300 cycles. The surface pN-C coating strategy can be extended to design and fabricate various metal oxide nanostructures for high-performance LIBs.