1D Ni-Co oxide and sulfide nanoarray/carbon aerogel hybrid nanostructures for asymmetric supercapacitors with high energy density and excellent cycling stability

Pin Hao; Jian Tian; Yuanhua Sang; Chia-Chi Tuan; Guanwei Cui; Xifeng Shi; C P Wong; Bo Tang; Hong Liu

doi:10.1039/c6nr05385h

1D Ni-Co oxide and sulfide nanoarray/carbon aerogel hybrid nanostructures for asymmetric supercapacitors with high energy density and excellent cycling stability

Nanoscale. 2016 Sep 15;8(36):16292-16301. doi: 10.1039/c6nr05385h.

Authors

Pin Hao¹, Jian Tian², Yuanhua Sang³, Chia-Chi Tuan⁴, Guanwei Cui¹, Xifeng Shi¹, C P Wong⁴, Bo Tang¹, Hong Liu³

Affiliations

¹ College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Collaborative Innovation Center of Functionalized Probes for Chemical Imaging in Universities of Shandong, Key Laboratory of Molecular and Nano Probes, Ministry of Education, Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Clean Production of Fine Chemicals, Shandong Normal University, Jinan 250014, P. R. China. tangb@sdnu.edu.cn.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266590, P. R. China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Crystal Materials, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, P. R. China. hongliu@sdu.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30032, USA.

PMID: 27714086
DOI: 10.1039/c6nr05385h

Abstract

The fabrication of supercapacitor electrodes with high energy density and excellent cycling stability is still a great challenge. A carbon aerogel, possessing a hierarchical porous structure, high specific surface area and electrical conductivity, is an ideal backbone to support transition metal oxides and bring hope to prepare electrodes with high energy density and excellent cycling stability. Therefore, NiCo₂S₄ nanotube array/carbon aerogel and NiCo₂O₄ nanoneedle array/carbon aerogel hybrid supercapacitor electrode materials were synthesized by assembling Ni-Co precursor needle arrays on the surface of the channel walls of hierarchical porous carbon aerogels derived from chitosan in this study. The 1D nanostructures grow on the channel surface of the carbon aerogel vertically and tightly, contributing to the enhanced electrochemical performance with ultrahigh energy density. The energy density of NiCo₂S₄ nanotube array/carbon aerogel and NiCo₂O₄ nanoneedle array/carbon aerogel hybrid asymmetric supercapacitors can reach up to 55.3 Wh kg^-1 and 47.5 Wh kg^-1 at a power density of 400 W kg^-1, respectively. These asymmetric devices also displayed excellent cycling stability with a capacitance retention of about 96.6% and 92% over 5000 cycles.