Rational design of forest-like nickel sulfide hierarchical architectures with ultrahigh areal capacity as a binder-free cathode material for hybrid supercapacitors

G. Seeta Rama Raju, E. Pavitra, Goli Nagaraju, S. Chandra Sekhar, Seyed Majid Ghoreishian, Cheol Hwan Kwak, Jae Su Yu, Yun Suk Huh, Young Kyu Han

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

93 Scopus citations

Abstract

Evolution of a simple, efficient and reproducible strategy for the rational design of hierarchically structured metal chalcogenide-based supercapacitors has attracted considerable research interest in recent years. Herein, a facile wet-chemistry approach is employed to design three-dimensional forest-like porous nickel sulfide nanotrees on nickel foam (NiS NTs/Ni foam) for use as a cathode material in hybrid supercapacitors. The growth time plays a crucial role in controlling the surface morphology, and the optimal growth conditions (3 h at 85 °C) led to the growth of forest-like NiS NTs/Ni foam with reliable adherence. The forest-like NiS NTs/Ni foam shows maximum areal and specific capacities of 752.71 μA h cm-2 and 342.1 mA h g-1 at a current density of 4 mA cm-2, with an excellent cycling stability of 89.4%. This result is primarily due to the availability of more surface-active sites in the well-defined hierarchical architecture, which allow the rapid diffusion of electrolyte ions and minimize the electron transport limitation. Utilizing the hierarchical NiS NTs/Ni foam as a cathode and activated carbon-based anode, we further fabricated a hybrid supercapacitor, which demonstrates a wide potential window of 1.6 V with high areal energy and power densities of 0.472 mW h cm-2 and 21.5 mW cm-2, respectively. The fabricated hybrid supercapacitor is successfully utilized to drive various electronic gadgets for real-life applications. The electrochemical performance of a hierarchically structured NiS-based binder-free electrode with our facile approach paves a new pathway for the development of novel metal chalcogenides for high-performance hybrid supercapacitors.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)13178-13190
Number of pages13
JournalJournal of Materials Chemistry A
Volume6
Issue number27
DOIs
StatePublished - 2018

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