Growth of uniform CuCo2O4 porous nanosheets and nanowires for high-performance hybrid supercapacitors

Abstract

In this work, uniform CuCo2O4 nanowires (CCO-NWs) and nanosheets (CCO-NSs) were directly grown on the stainless-steel foil via a hydrothermal process with a post calcination treatment in air, and powdered CuCo2O4 materials were obtained once they were peeled off from the stainless-steel substrate. These NWs- and NSs-based powders possessed a huge specific surface area and mesoporous feature. After electrochemical tests, it was found that the CCO-NWs delivered a capacity of 299.12 C g−1 and CCO-NSs could exhibit a capacity of up to 332.18 C g−1. A hybrid supercapacitor (HSC) was assembled with activated carbon (AC) as anode to evaluate the practical applications of CuCo2O4 in energy storage. The CCO-NWs//AC HSC exhibited an energy density of 36.16 W h kg−1 at 1.01 kW kg−1, and as for the CCO-NSs//AC HSC, it delivered 38.46 W h kg−1 at the power density of 1.03 kW kg−1. Both HSCs showed excellent cycling performance over 5000 cycles at 6 A g−1. The superior electrochemical performance of CuCo2O4 NWs and NSs indicates that the battery-type CuCo2O4 electrode materials can serve as advanced cathode for high-performance supercapacitors, and the simple synthetic method can be extended to the preparation of other transition metal oxides (TMOs)-based electrode materials with uniform structure and impressive electrochemical properties.