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Self-etching Ni–Co hydroxides@Ni–Cu nanowire arrays with enhancing ultrahigh areal capacitance for flexible thin-film supercapacitors

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Abstract

Flexible thin-film supercapacitors with high specific capacitance are highly desirable for modern wearable or micro-sized electrical and electronic applications. In this contribution, Ni–Co hydroxides (NCH) nanosheets were deposited on top of Ni–Cu alloy (NCA) nanowire arrays forming a freestanding thin-film composite electrode with hierarchical structure for supercapacitors. During electrochemical cycling, the dissolution of Cu into Cu ions will create more active sites on NCA, and the re-deposited copper oxide can be coated onto NCH, giving rise to substantial increase in specific capacitance with cycling. Meanwhile, NCA and NCH have excellent conductivity, thus leading to excellent rate performance. This flexible thin-film electrode delivers an ultrahigh initial specific capacitance of 0.63 F·cm−2 (or 781.3 F·cm−3). During charge–discharge cycles, the specific capacitance can increase up to 1.18 F·cm−2 (or 1475 F·cm−3) along with the “self-etching” process. The electrode presents a better specific capacitance and rate capability compared with previously reported flexible thin-film electrode, and this novel design of etching technique may expand to other binary or ternary materials.

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2015CB654603), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51572141, 51532003), Beijing Nova Program (No. XX2013037) and the Research fund of Science and Technology in Shenzhen (No. JSGG20150331155519130).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Peng Guo, Yang Shen, Jing Ma, Yuan-Hua Lin & Ce-Wen Nan

  2. Laboratory of Advanced Energy Storage Materials and Devices, Research Institute of Tsinghua University in Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518057, China

    Yu Song

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  1. Peng Guo
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  2. Yang Shen
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  3. Yu Song
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  5. Yuan-Hua Lin
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Correspondence to Yang Shen.

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Guo, P., Shen, Y., Song, Y. et al. Self-etching Ni–Co hydroxides@Ni–Cu nanowire arrays with enhancing ultrahigh areal capacitance for flexible thin-film supercapacitors. Rare Met. 36, 691–697 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-017-0884-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12598-017-0884-y

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