Hierarchical carbon-coated manganese nitride 3D porous/nickel nanostructure as an electrode material for supercapacitors

The present work reports an effective synthesis method for developing a carbon-coated three-dimensional (3D) porous manganese nitride electrode on a stainless-steel (SS) substrate. The microstructural studies revealed that the carbon-coated metal nitride deposited uniformly over the 3D-Ni/SS current collector. The carbon-coated manganese nitride (C-Mn3N2) on the 3D Nickel (3D-Ni) electrode delivered a specific capacitance of 311F g−1 (156 mF cm−2) at 2 A g−1. Moreover, the electrode retained 97.2 % of its initial capacitance delivering excellent electrochemical stability even after 5000 galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD) cycles at 5 A g−1. These results highlight that the 3D architecture followed by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) process delivered better electrochemical performance, mainly due to the large electroactive area, open porous structure, and direct attachment of electroactive materials with the current collector.