Template strategy to synthesize porous Mn-Co-S nanospheres electrode for high-performance supercapacitors

Supercapacitors, such as pseudocapacitors (PCs), are widely used because of their excellent electrochemical activity and capacitance; however, it is still challenging to fabricate PCs with high stability and good electrochemical properties. Therefore, suitable templates and transition metal composite materials should be selected for improving their performance. Binary transition metal sulfides exhibit excellent electrochemical performance owing to their rich valence, electrical conductivity, and abundant electrochemical active sites. In this study, we prepared porous Mn-Co-S nanospheres (MCSN) via the hydrothermal method using silica colloidal particles was as the template; to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to synthesize MCSN. Results suggest that the MCSN composite exhibited excellent conductivity and enhanced stability owing to the porous structure formed by the vertical growth of MnS2-CoS2 nanosheets on silica nanoparticles. The porous MCSN electrode showed an excellent specific capacitance of 1158 F g(-1) at 1 A g(-1). Moreover, when coupled with an activated carbon (AC) positive electrode, the supercapacitor of MCSN//AC exhibited stability of 90.4% after 5000 cycles at 10 A g(-1) (the specific energy of 34 W h kg(-1) at 775 W kg(-1)). Given the results, we believe that the prepared MCSN material has potential application prospects for high-efficiency supercapacitors.