Nanostructure Electrodes for Supercapacitors

Two researchers from the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, India, have developed a novel supercapacitor electrode based on a hybrid nanostructure made from a hybrid nickel oxide-iron oxide exterior shell and a conductive iron-nickel core. 

In a paper published in the Journal of Applied Physics, the researchers report the fabrication technique of the hybrid nanostructure electrode. They also demonstrate its superior performance compared to existing, non-hybrid supercapacitor electrodes. Since nickel oxide and iron oxide are environmental friendly and cheap materials that are widely available in nature, the novel electrode promises green and low-cost supercapacitors in future.

"This hybrid electrode shows the superior electrochemical performance in terms of high capacitance of nearly 1415 farad per gram, high current density of 2.5 ampere per gram, low resistance and high power density," said Ashutosh K. Singh, the primary researcher at the Department of Condensed Matter Physics and Material Sciences at the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences. "It also has a long-term cycling stability, in other words, the electrode could retain nearly 95 percent of initial capacitance after cycling or charging and discharging 3,000 times."

Conventional batteries have high energy density or can store a lot of electric energy, but can take hours to charge and discharge. Supercapacitors are a bridge between conventional capacitors and batteries, combining the advantageous properties of high power, high energy density and low internal resistance, which may replace batteries as a fast, reliable and potentially safer power source for electric and portable electronic devices in future, said Singh.

In supercapacitors, high capacitance, or the ability to store an electrical charge, is critical to achieve higher energy density. Meanwhile, to achieve a higher power density, it is critical to have a large electrochemically accessible surface area, high electrical conductivity and short ion diffusion pathways. Nanostructured active materials provide a means to these ends.

Inspired by previous research on improving conductivity via doping different metal oxide materials, Singh and Kalyan Mandal, another researcher and a professor at the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, mixed nickel oxide and iron oxide as a hybrid material and fabricated the novel core/shell nanostructure electrode.

"By changing the materials and morphologies of the electrode, one can manipulate the performance and quality of the supercapacitors," Singh said.

In Singh's experiment, the core/shell hybrid nanostructure was fabricated through a two-step method. Using a standard electro-deposition technique, the researchers grew arrays of iron-nickel nanowires inside the pores of anodized alumina oxide templates, then dissolved the templates to obtain the bare hybrid nanowires. After that, the researchers exposed the nanowires in an oxygen environment at high temperature (450 degrees Celsius) for a short time, eventually developing a highly porous iron oxide-nickel oxide hybrid shell around the iron-nickel core.