Ternary metal sulfides are emerging as a new class of electrochemical energy storage materials outperforming their oxide counterparts. We report here a facile and scalable solvothermal synthetic approach for growth of carbon doped MnCo2S4 microcubes (edge length, 10 mu m) directly on Ni foam. The simple approach of binder-free design, in-situ carbon doping and the use of 3D current collector resulted in an extraordinarily high specific capacity of 1892C g(-1) (525.7 mAh g(-1)) at 5 A g(-1) and outstanding rate performance of 516C g(-1) (143.3 mAh g (1)) at a very high current density of 100 A g(-1) when tested as a faradaic electrode in aqueous KOH electrolyte. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) results indicate concurrent intercalation of both H+ and OH ions from the electrolyte during the electrochemical processes. In two-electrode symmetric MnCo2S4//KOH//MnCo2S4 cells, mimicking the physical configuration of practical cells, specific capacity of 215Cg(-1) (59.7 mAh g(-1)) could be achieved at 1 Ag-1. Further, the symmetric cell delivers energy densities of 106.5 and 15.2 Wh kg(-1) at power densities of 0.85 and 18 kW kg(-1) demonstrating great application prospects. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.