A novel route for electrosynthesis of CuCr2O4 nanocomposite with p-type conductive polymer as a high performance material for electrochemical supercapacitors

Abstract

In this work, supercapacitive performance of polypyrrole copper chromate nano particles (Ppy/CuCr2O4 NPs) was studied. CuCr2O4 NPs with the average size of 20nm were synthesized simply by hydrothermal method and the composite electrodes were then electropolymerized on the surface of glassy carbon electrode. Common surface analysis techniques such as scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy(TEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) were used to study the morphology and structure of the composite. Furthermore, for electrochemical evaluation of composite electrodes, techniques including cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge discharge (CD) and impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were used. Using cyclic voltammetry, the specific capacitance values of Ppy and Ppy/CuCr2O4 NPs were calculated to be 109 and 508 F g−1, respectively. Results show that using CuCr2O4 NPs in the structure of polymeric films led to increased specific capacitance of composite electrodes more than four times that of poly pyrrole. Increasing the conductivity and stability of composite electrodes through continuous cycles are the other advantages of using CuCr2O4 NPs as active materials in a polymeric structure.