Influence of deposition temperature on physical and electrochemical properties of reduced graphene oxide electrode material for supercapacitor application

Abstract

Flexible electrode material with high surface area and good electrochemical properties is the current trend captivating the researchers across globe for application in the next generation energy storage field. In view of this, the present paper reports crumpled sheet like reduced graphene oxide grown on carbon cloth by the hydrothermal method with a series of different deposition temperatures from 120 °C to 200 °C with the step width of 20 °C for a fixed time 6 h. The influence of the deposition temperature on the structural, morphological, optical and supercapacitive properties of the electrode material was investigated by XRD, Raman, XPS, TEM, FE-SEM, and electrochemical characterization techniques like CV, CP and EIS. The results show that the hydrothermally synthesized reduced graphene oxide on carbon cloth has sheet like mesoporous structure. The reduced graphene oxide deposited at 160 °C exhibits the superlative supercapacitive performance, with highest value of specific capacitance and areal capacitance are 443 F g−1 and 532.48 mF cm−2 respectively at scan rate 5 mV s−1. Moreover, stability studies shows 97% capacitance retention over 1000 CV cycles. The synergistic contribution of electric double layer capacitance (EDLC) and pseudo-capacitance leads the better electrochemical performance of RGO electrode. These results show that hydrothermally synthesized RGO on carbon cloth is the inordinate electrode material and would be most appropriate for supercapacitor application.