Interface engineering of tungsten disulfide by incorporating chromium nitride interfacial layer for hybrid supercapacitors

Abstract

By confronting the ongoing challenges of energy storage after generation, a unique technology referred to as hybrid energy storage systems appears as a potential solution for energy storage applications. In hybrid supercapacitors, optimizing the electrode characteristics by precise interface engineering greatly improves performance, supporting the device's stability and ability to store charge. The focus of this research is on the interface engineering of tungsten disulfide from the family of transition metal dichalcogenides by the incorporation of chromium nitride interfacial layer of 100 nm on 1 cm2 substrate via magnetron sputtering. The structural characteristics of the resulting samples were acquired using SEM, XRD, Raman, and EDX. The study further employed the half-cell assembly for exploring the electrochemical performance of pure WS2 and WS2 with CrN interfacial layer. The enhanced composition of WS2/CrN was then used as a working electrode alongside activated carbon in a hybrid supercapacitor arrangement. The device reveals a specific capacity, capacitance, power and energy density of 348 C/g, 481.3 F/g, 4250 W/kg and 82.6 Wh/kg, respectively along with capacity retention of 89 % after 10,000 GCD cycles. Following this, the device's performance was evaluated using a semi-empirical approach, comparing capacitive and diffusive mechanisms from linear and quadratic models to study battery-supercapacitor hybrids.