Effect of alkaline environment on the electrochemical performance of manganese ferrate materials in lithium-ion battery cathode materials

• Characterization and performance of manganese ferrite nanomaterials synthesized by comparing two alkaline environments. • Previous experiments found that manganese ferrite nanomaterials could not be synthesized under acidic condition. • The use of solvothermal method is simple, rapid, and the synthetic material has good performance, which is expected to replace the commercial anode material. Efficient energy storage system based on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) is the leading technology in portable equipment market. In this study, manganese ferrite (MnFe 2 O 4 ) nanomaterials treated at 200 °C for 8 h were synthesized by solvothermal method under the condition of pH = 12 and pH = 10 respectively, and the spherical MnFe 2 O 4 nanoparticles with an average size of 23 nm were obtained. MnFe 2 O 4 materials were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results demonstrated that MnFe 2 O 4 nanomaterials prepared under pH = 12 have smaller particle size. They were also tested as anodes for LIBs in multiplicity tests. The materials synthesized at pH = 10 decayed faster with increasing current density, while the MnFe 2 O 4 nanoparticles synthesized at pH = 12 had a more excellent performance with a first-turn discharge specific capacity of 1700 mAh/g and about 750 mAh/g at 0.1 A/g and 1 A/g, respectively. In addition, the cycle stability was also tested. After 350 cycles, the specific capacity of the materials composited at pH = 12 still reached about 450 mAh/g at 0.5 A/g. The electrochemical data show that the smaller the material particles are, the better the performance is. Therefore, the MnFe 2 O 4 nanomaterials could be applied as a potential anode electromaterial in the future.