MnO2/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) coaxial nanowires by one-step coelectrodeposition for electrochemical energy storage.

One-dimensional (1D) nanostructured materials have been intensively investigated as building components in electrochemical energy storage1 and solar energy conversion2 devices because they provide short diffusion path lengths to ions and excitons, leading to high charge/discharge rates1 and high solar energy conversion efficiency.2 More recently, coaxial nanowires have attracted greater attention in this field due to their added synergic properties (e.g., high conductivity)3a or functionalities (e.g., core/shell p-n junction)3b,c arising from the combination of different materials.3 Various materials such as semiconductor/semiconductor, metal/ metal oxide, and metal oxide/metal oxide, have been employed as core/shell in coaxial nanowires.3 However, there have been few studies on the coaxial nanowires with transition metal oxide and conductive polymer, although both of them are important electroactive materials used in electrochemical energy storage.4 The combination of these two materials at 1D nanostructures may exhibit excellent electrical, electrochemical, and mechanical properties for electrochemical energy storage. To date, only a few reports have been published on the synthesis of metal oxide/ conductive polymer with core/shell structures.5 In all of these reports, a stepwise synthetic approach was adopted: metal oxide nanoparticles,5a nanostrands,5b or nanotubes5c were first synthesized and subsequently coated chemically by conductive polymers as shells. In this paper, we introduce a simple one-step method to synthesize MnO2/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) coaxial nanowires by coelectrodeposition in a porous alumina template.6 MnO2 is one of the most popular electrochemical energy storage materials because of its high energy density, low cost, environmental friendliness, and natural abundance,7 but it has poor conductivity.4c PEDOT has merits of excellent conductivity, high stability, and mechanical flexibility,8 but it provides low electrochemical energy density. Electrodeposition is used here because it is a simple yet versatile method in controlling structures and their composition by tuning applied potentials and electrolyte ingredients.9 In this report, MnO2/PEDOT coaxial nanowires are found to be promising electrochemical energy storage materials. The core MnO2 provides high energy storage capacity, while the highly conductive, porous, and flexible PEDOT shell facilitates the electron transport and ion diffusion into the core MnO2 and protects it from structurally significant collapsing and breaking. These combined properties enable the coaxial nanowires to have very high specific capacitances at high current densities. Scheme 1 illustrates the growth of MnO2/PEDOT coaxial nanowires. Under a constant potential (typically 0.75 V vs Ag/ AgCl), Mn2+ (10 mM manganese acetate) is converted to its higher oxidization state, which can readily undergo hydrolysis to yield MnO2. Simultaneously, EDOT monomer (80 mM) is electropolymerized into PEDOT in the pores of the template.10 Very interestingly, this coelectrodeposition gives rise to formation of coaxial nanowires. Figure 1a shows the SEM image of free-standing coaxial nanowires grown at 0.75 V after removal of template. Figure 1b shows the TEM image of a single coaxial nanowire. Although the core MnO2 and shell PEDOT can be easily distinguished by their morphologies in TEM images, energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopic (EDS) elemental maps of S and Mn (Figure 1c and d) from the designated area in Figure 1b clearly confirms the coaxial nanostructure. The electron diffraction pattern reveals that the core MnO2 is amorphous (see Supporting information). We can easily control the structures of coaxial nanowires such as PEDOT shell thickness and nanowire length by varying the applied potential. This should provide us with the ability to tune electrochemical properties of the coaxial nanowires. Since the onset growth potential of MnO2 (0.5 V) is lower than that of PEDOT (0.75 V), MnO2 nanowires can be selectively grown below 0.6 V, while PEDOT nanowires are grown at the potentials above 0.85 V due to the higher growth rate of PEDOT given that the concentration of EDOT monomer is 8 times that of Mn2+. Between these two extreme potentials, coaxial nanowires with various PEDOT shell thicknesses (25-100 nm) can be obtained, as shown in Figure 1e. After the MnO2 cores in these coaxial nanowires are selectively removed by wet etching, PEDOT nanotubes with different wall thicknesses are obtained and clearly observed by TEM (Supporting information). Interestingly, the inner surface morphology of PEDOT nanotubes appears somewhat rough and spiky. It suggests the PEDOT may have grown into the MnO2 core layer. This can be supported further by an EDS line-scan profile on a single coaxial nanowire (Supporting information). Such PEDOT penetrations may play important roles in further improving the core conductivity. The growth mechanism of coaxial nanowires, although not completely understood, is briefly suggested as follows. We have previously proved that the sputtered ring-shape Au electrodes at the bottom of the pores can direct the growth of PEDOT nanotubes at low overpotential.11 This may explain the preferential formation of the PEDOT shell. In addition, MnO2 and PEDOT tend to have phase segregation when coelectrodeposited at bulk electrode surface (Supporting information). The phase segregation of these two materials may force the MnO2 to grow in the spaces left by the PEDOT shells as the cores. Scheme 1. One-Step Synthesis of MnO2/PEDOT Coaxial Nanowires Published on Web 02/15/2008