Hybrid NiO–CuO mesoporous nanowire array with abundant oxygen vacancies and a hollow structure as a high-performance asymmetric supercapacitor

• Published in: Journal of materials chemistry. A, Materials for energy and sustainability Vol. 6; no. 42; pp. 21131 - 21142
• Main Authors: Fang, Zhenbin, Rehman, Sajid ur, Sun, Mingze, Yuan, Yupeng, Jin, Shaowei, Bi, Hong
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge Royal Society of Chemistry 2018
• Subjects: Capacitance; Conductivity; Construction; Copper; Crystal defects; Cycles; Diffusion rate; Discharge; Electrodes; Graphene; Hydrogels; Lattice vacancies; Metal foams; Nanotechnology; Nanowires; Nickel oxides; Oxides; Oxygen; Specific capacity; Stability; Structural integrity; Supercapacitors; Transition metal oxides; Transition metals
• ISSN: 2050-7488; 2050-7496
• DOI: 10.1039/C8TA08262F

High specific capacity as well as good cycling stability are crucial for practical applications of supercapacitors, but actually the specific capacitances of transition metal oxide-based electrodes are still far below their theoretical predictions, and their cycling stabilities cannot satisfy the commercial standard due to intrinsically poor electronic conductivity and volume structural changes during charging/discharging processes. Here, we report the synthesis of a hybrid NiO–CuO mesoporous nanowire array with abundant oxygen vacancies which constructs a three-dimensional (3D) hollow architecture via a facile hydrothermal method and subsequent annealing. Compared to single-phase NiO or CuO, the increased O-vacancies on the NiO–CuO hybrid nanowires probably arising from a high number of lattice defects can promote their electronic conductivity, as revealed by XPS O 1s spectra, EPR characterization and HRTEM images. In addition, the 3D hollow structure together with mesoporous nanowires composed of alternately linked NiO and CuO nanocrystals can relax strain stress either in a hollow 3D structure or along a one-dimensional (1D)-direction nanowire, which not only provides a fast diffusion pathway for electrolyte ions and a high surface area with more active sites, but also helps to maintain the structural integrity during charge/discharge cycles. Therefore, the as-prepared NiO–CuO@Ni foam has a high areal capacitance of 4.35 F cm −2 and also a very high specific capacitance of 1450.8 F g −1 at a current density of 2 mA cm −2 . Further, it can be utilized directly as a binder-free positive electrode, and assembled with a negative electrode based on a 3D porous graphene hydrogel (PGH) to construct an asymmetric supercapacitor, which shows a wide potential window of 1.6 V and an outstanding cycling stability of 90.4% capacitance retention after 5000 charge/discharge cycles.