The invention discloses a manganese oxide / nickel micro-sphere with a porous structure, and a preparation method and application thereof. The preparation method comprises the steps of adopting manganese acetate and nickel acetate as a manganese source and a nickel source, adopting urea as a precipitator, adopting water and ethylene glycol as solvents, firstly adopting a hydrothermal method for synthesizing a carbonate precursor of manganese and nickel, and then calcining under an argon atmosphere to obtain the manganese oxide / nickel micro-sphere with the porous structure. Manganese and nickel elements in the micro-sphere are distributed uniformly, the sphere is formed by self-assembly of nanoparticles, meanwhile, a lot of staggered nanosheets exist on the surface of the sphere, each nanosheet is formed by overlapping two layers of thinner nanosheets, a gap exists between the layers, and the specific surface area is larger. The porous structure assembled by secondary particles is not only beneficial for full contact of an electrolyte and an active substance, but also effectively adapt to volume expansion of a material in a charging and discharging process, so that the electrochemical performance of the manganese oxide / nickel micro-sphere when being used as a lithium ion battery cathode material is greatly improved. The preparation method provided by the invention is easy and convenient to operate, controllable in reaction conditions, and easy for scale-up experiment.