A Novel CVD Growth of g‐C 3 N 4 Ultrathin Film on NiCo 2 O 4 Nanoneedles/Carbon Cloth as Integrated Electrodes for Supercapacitors

• Published in: ChemElectroChem Vol. 5; no. 22; pp. 3383 - 3390
• Main Authors: Guo, Wen, Ming, Shujun, Chen, Zhen, Bi, Jiajun, Ma, Yajuan, Wang, Jingyu, Li, Tao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 13.11.2018
• ISSN: 2196-0216; 2196-0216
• DOI: 10.1002/celc.201801045

Abstract Although g‐C 3 N 4 possesses many features such as a graphene‐like 2D π‐conjugated planar layered structure, high nitrogen content, excellent mechanical strength and flexibility, as well as high thermal and chemical stability, there are only a few studies on the exploration of g‐C 3 N 4 as active materials for supercapacitors. This could be largely attributed to the fact that the above advantages of g‐C 3 N 4 to hybrid with other materials are still not fully established. Herein, we successfully develop a facile low‐temperature CVD method to grow g‐C 3 N 4 ultrathin films with several nanometers thickness on the surface of NiCo 2 O 4 nanoneedles. Subsequently, a NiCo 2 O 4 nanoneedles@g‐C 3 N 4 ultrathin film core‐shell nanostructures/carbon cloth (NiCo 2 O 4 NNs@g‐C 3 N 4 /CC) integrated electrode was obtained. Thanks to the ultrathin film, a core‐shell nanostructure, as well as intrinsic features of g‐C 3 N 4 , the as‐obtained integrated electrode displays excellent electrochemical performance, exhibiting an areal capacitance of 2.83 F cm −2 as well as high cycling stability (5.88 % loss after 10 000 cycles). Our results clearly demonstrate that the g‐C 3 N 4 ultrathin film obtained through this facile CVD method developed has potential in hybridizing with other transition metal oxides as electrode materials for supercapacitors and, more importantly, this convenient synthesis method may also be widely used for other applications such as designing new heterojunction photocatalysts.