Cobalt Oxide-Decorated Silicon Carbide Nano-Tree Array Electrode for Micro-Supercapacitor Application

Chuan-Pei Lee; Bayu-Tri Murti; Po-Kang Yang; Francesca Rossi; Carlo Carraro; Roya Maboudian

doi:10.3390/ma14164514

Cobalt Oxide-Decorated Silicon Carbide Nano-Tree Array Electrode for Micro-Supercapacitor Application

Materials (Basel). 2021 Aug 11;14(16):4514. doi: 10.3390/ma14164514.

Authors

Chuan-Pei Lee^{1

2}, Bayu-Tri Murti^{1

3

4}, Po-Kang Yang⁴, Francesca Rossi⁵, Carlo Carraro², Roya Maboudian²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Physics and Chemistry, University of Taipei, Taipei 10048, Taiwan.
² Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
³ Graduate Institute of Biomedical Materials and Tissue Engineering, College of Biomedical Engineering, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan.
⁴ Department of Biomedical Sciences and Engineering, National Central University, Chung-li 32001, Taiwan.
⁵ IMEM-CNR Institute, Parco Area delle Scienze 37/A, 43124 Parma, Italy.

Abstract

A cobalt oxide (Co₃O₄)-decorated silicon carbide (SiC) nano-tree array (denoted as Co₃O₄/SiC NTA) electrode is synthesized, and it is investigated for use in micro-supercapacitor applications. Firstly, the well-standing SiC nanowires (NWs) are prepared by nickel (Ni)-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, and then the thin layer of Co₃O₄ and the hierarchical Co₃O₄ nano-flower-clusters are, respectively, fabricated on the side-walls and the top side of the SiC NWs via electrodeposition. The deposition of Co₃O₄ on the SiC NWs benefits the charge transfer at the electrode/aqueous electrolyte interface due to its extremely hydrophilic surface characteristic after Co₃O₄ decoration. Furthermore, the Co₃O₄/SiC NTA electrode provides a directional charge transport route along the length of SiC nanowires owing to their well-standing architecture. By using the Co₃O₄/SiC NTA electrode for micro-supercapacitor application, the areal capacitance obtained from cyclic voltammetry measurement reaches 845 mF cm^-2 at a 10 mV s^-1 scan rate. Finally, the capacitance durability is also evaluated by the cycling test of cyclic voltammetry at a high scan rate of 150 mV s^-1 for 2000 cycles, exhibiting excellent stability.

Keywords: chemical vapor deposition; cobalt oxide; micro-supercapacitor; nanowire; silicon carbide.