High-performance asymmetric supercapacitor based on hierarchical hydrothermally grown CuS nanostructures

Abstract

In this work, various hierarchical CuS were fabricated via an efficient one-step hydrothermal process with different surfactants (polyvinyl pyrrolidine (CS-P), Citric acid (CS-C), Oleic acid (CS-O)) and examined as electrode materials for supercapacitors. XRD, FESEM, HRTEM and BET analysis reveal the fabrication of a hexagonal crystal structure with porous microspheres of CuS-PVP having a BJH pore diameter of 16.241 nm. Among these, the CS-P electrode exhibits a superior specific capacitance of 414.28F/g at 1 A/g of current density in the KOH electrolyte. Additionally, an asymmetric supercapacitor built with CS-P as positive and Activated carbon as negative electrodes exhibited a specific energy of 27.95 Wh/kg at 624.96 W/kg of specific power at 2 A/g and demonstrated outstanding cycling stability with 80.6 % persistence of capacitance for 2500 GCD cycles at 10 A/g. Additionally, an ASC device created for use in real life and tested by charging it for 30 s managed to reach a 3-minute 50-second self-discharging duration. Hence, these favourable electrochemical findings indicate that the hydrothermally grown hierarchical CuS-PVP electrode is a bright potential material in energy storage applications.