Flower-Shaped Self-Assembled Ni0.5Cu0.5Co2O4 Porous Architecture: A Ternary Metal Oxide as a High-Performance Charge Storage Electrode Material

Abstract

In this work, a wet-chemical followed by thermal annealing strategy is employed to prepare Ni0.5Cu0.5Co2O4 without using any template. The material with flower-like architecture is composed of several nanorods that exhibit good textural properties (surface area: 120 m2/g, pore volume: 0.35 cc/g) and exposed facets and thus offers numerous electroactive sites for ion diffusion at the vicinity of electrode–electrolyte. The fabricated electrode with Ni0.5Cu0.5Co2O4 exhibits a higher specific capacitance of 367.4 F/g compared to fabricated electrodes using NiCo2O4 (280.3 F/g) and CuCo2O4(133.5 F/g) at the current density of 1 A/g. The material also exhibits high electronic conductivity (low Rct) and impressive cycling stability (89% retention after 5000th cycle). The combination of the synergistic effect of the variable oxidation state of three metal ions, large electroactive surface area, and fast ion diffusion through the porous structure are responsible for this high performance supercapacitive property of...