Novel fabrication of hollow and spinous NiCo2S4 nanotubes templated by natural silk for all-solid-state asymmetric supercapacitors

Weiguo Huang; Aitang Zhang; Hui Liang; Rui Liu; Jintao Cai; Liang Cui; Jingquan Liu

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2019.04.066

Novel fabrication of hollow and spinous NiCo₂S₄ nanotubes templated by natural silk for all-solid-state asymmetric supercapacitors

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2019 Aug 1:549:140-149. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.04.066. Epub 2019 Apr 23.

Authors

Weiguo Huang¹, Aitang Zhang¹, Hui Liang¹, Rui Liu¹, Jintao Cai¹, Liang Cui², Jingquan Liu³

Affiliations

¹ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Institute for Graphene Applied Technology Innovation, Collaborative Innovation Centre for Marine Biomass Fibers, Materials and Textiles of Shandong Province, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, Shandong, China.
² College of Materials Science and Engineering, Linyi University, China.
³ College of Materials Science and Engineering, Institute for Graphene Applied Technology Innovation, Collaborative Innovation Centre for Marine Biomass Fibers, Materials and Textiles of Shandong Province, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, Shandong, China. Electronic address: jliu@qdu.edu.cn.

PMID: 31029842
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2019.04.066

Abstract

Recently, ternary cobalt nickel sulfide, performing as the promising electrode material for supercapacitors has obtained great interests. Herein, the hollow and spinous NiCo₂S₄ nanotubes are designed and prepared through a simple hydrothermal reaction using the natural silk as the template. The spinous Ni-Co precursors are grown on the natural silk through a facile hydrothermal strategy and the hollow structure is obtained by decomposing the silk via hydrothermal sulfurization. After the calcination treatment, the hollow and spinous NiCo₂S₄ nanotubes are applied as the electrode material and exhibit better electrochemical performance than the solely vulcanized samples. In addition, owing to the unique hollow and spinous structure of NiCo₂S₄ nanotubes, the supercapacitor electrode material shows good specific capacitance (630 F g^-1 at 1 A g^-1), low internal resistance R_s (0.68 Ω) and high capacitance retention (91% after 3000 cycles) at 10 A g^-1. Furthermore, an all-solid-state asymmetric supercapacitor is self-assembled with the SC400 composite and exhibits an energy density of 52.34 Wh kg^-1 at the power density of 2206.37 W kg^-1. Additionally, a blue LED indicator can be powered by connecting two ASCs in series. The prepared hollow and spinous NiCo₂S₄ nanotubes with excellent electrochemical properties can envision promising applications in energy storage devices and nanotechnology.

Keywords: Hollow and spinous structure; Natural silk; NiCo(2)S(4) nanotubes; Supercapacitor.