Carbon nanofibers wrapped with zinc oxide nano-flakes as promising electrode material for supercapacitors

Bishweshwar Pant; Mira Park; Gunendra Prasad Ojha; Juhyeong Park; Yun-Su Kuk; Eun-Jung Lee; Hak-Yong Kim; Soo-Jin Park

doi:10.1016/j.jcis.2018.03.055

Carbon nanofibers wrapped with zinc oxide nano-flakes as promising electrode material for supercapacitors

J Colloid Interface Sci. 2018 Jul 15:522:40-47. doi: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.03.055. Epub 2018 Mar 17.

Authors

Bishweshwar Pant¹, Mira Park², Gunendra Prasad Ojha³, Juhyeong Park⁴, Yun-Su Kuk⁵, Eun-Jung Lee⁶, Hak-Yong Kim⁷, Soo-Jin Park⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Inha University, 100 Inharo, Incheon 402-751, South Korea.
² Department of Organic Materials and Fiber Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561-756, South Korea.
³ Department of BIN Convergence Technology, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561756, South Korea.
⁴ Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63130, USA.
⁵ Korea Institute of Carbon Convergence Technology (KCTECH), Jeonju, South Korea.
⁶ Department of Carbon Materials and Fiber Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561-756, South Korea.
⁷ Department of Organic Materials and Fiber Engineering, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561-756, South Korea; Department of BIN Convergence Technology, Chonbuk National University, Jeonju 561756, South Korea. Electronic address: khy@jbnu.ac.kr.
⁸ Department of Chemistry, Inha University, 100 Inharo, Incheon 402-751, South Korea. Electronic address: sjpark@inha.ac.kr.

PMID: 29574267
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcis.2018.03.055

Abstract

A combination of electrospinning technique and hydrothermal process was carried out to fabricate zinc oxide nano-flakes wrapped carbon nanofibers (ZnO/CNFs) composite as an effective electrode material for supercapacitor. The morphology of the as-synthesized composite clearly revealed that the carbon nanofibers were successfully wrapped with ZnO nano-flakes. The electrochemical performance of the as-synthesized nanocomposite electrode was evaluated by the cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge-discharge (GDC), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and compared with the pristine ZnO nanofibers. It was found that the composite exhibited a higher specific capacitance (260 F/g) as compared to pristine ZnO NFs (118 F/g) at the scan rate of 5 mV/s. Furthermore, the ZnO/CNFs composite also exhibited good capacity retention (73.33%). The obtained results indicated great potential applications of ZnO/CNFs composite in developing energy storage devices with high energy and power densities. The present work might provide a new route for utilizing ZnO based composites for energy storage applications.

Keywords: Electrospinning; Hydrothermal; Supercapacitor; ZnO nano-flakes; ZnO/CNFs composite.