Effect of different precursors on the electrochemical behavior of CuS nanostructures as electrode material for supercapacitor applications

Abstract

In the present work, we synthesized copper sulfide (CuS) nanostructure using the co-precipitation technique by employing two different copper precursors such as copper nitrate, copper chloride with water as a solvent in order to investigate the effect of different precursors on the electrochemical behavior of CuS nanostructures as electrode material for supercapacitor application. X-ray diffraction analysis confirmed the pure phase (hexagonal-P63/mmc) formation of CuS nanostructures. The morphological and elemental compositional studies are done by scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy respectively. Electrochemical characterizations like cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge–discharge, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) were utilized to analyze the super capacitive properties of the fabricated electrode material in a three-electrode system using 2 M KOH solution as an aqueous electrolyte. The highest value of specific capacitance is found to be 346.66F/g at 2 A/g for the sample synthesized via copper nitrate precursor. Furthermore, it also displayed good cycling stability with more than 80 % retention of capacitance over 500 GCD cycles. Hence, the analysis of the result revealed that precursors play a major role in modifying the electrochemical properties.