Well-Dispersed Manganese-Oxo Clusters as Anode Materials for High-Performance Lithium Ion Batteries.

Metal-oxo clusters show great promise in lithium ion battery applications as anode materials by virtue of their native nature of well-defined nanostructures and multielectron redox activities. However, their intrinsic unsatisfactory electrical conductivity and tendency to aggregation make them difficult to fully utilize. Herein, a well-dispersed Mn 12 O 12 (CH 3 COO) 16 (H 2 O) 4 (denoted as Mn 12 ) cluster is constructed by rationally adopting carbon dots (CDs) with nanosize and high conductivity as stabilizers. Thanks to the fully exposed redox sites of Mn 12 clusters and additional interfacial energy storage mechanism, the optimized Mn 12 /CDs-1:20 anode delivers a high specific capacity of 1643 mAh g -1 at 0.2 A g -1 (0.25 C) and exhibits outstanding rate and cycling capabilities. This paper provides a green and efficient paradigm to synthesize well-dispersed manganese-oxo clusters for the first time and builds a new platform for cluster-based energy storage.