We have synthesized highly crystalline MnO2 nanowires by wet chemical biphasic method. Further, the gold nanoparticles were decorated on MnO2 nanowires. The MnO2 nanowire and gold nanopartide decorated MnO2 nanowire samples were well characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy etc. The supercapacitor performance for both the samples was tested under the identical conditions. The gold nanoparticles decorated on MnO2 nanowire exhibits cyclic stability cycles with only 3% capacity loss and maximum energy density of 37.08 Wh/kg. It has been observed that the gold decorated MnO2 nanowire shows superior performance towards supercapacitor application due to the increased defects, surface area and increase in the capacity towards charge storage. Our results can open up new avenue towards utilization of MnO2 nanowires and other metal oxide nanomaterials with controlled functionalization/decoration of metal nanoparticles for superior charge storage devices. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.