NiCo2O4/MWCNT/PANI coral-like nanostructured composite for electrochemical energy-storage applications

Abstract

In this work conductive polymeric polyaniline (PANI) nanofibers are prepared by a fast chemical method and in-situ assembled with electrostatic double-layer (multi-wall carbon nanotubes, MWNTs) and pseudocapacitive materials (metal oxides) to construct MWCNT/PANI, NiCo2O4/PANI and NiCo2O4/MWCNT/PANI coral-like nanostructured composites for electrochemical energy storage electrodes. X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, nitrogen adsorption isotherms, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) are used to analyze the structure of the resulting composite materials. Afterwards, electrochemical energy storage electrodes are prepared using the obtained nanostructured composites on glassy carbon (GC), and electrochemical tests are performed. The specific capacitance of PANI nanofibers, MWCNT/PANI, NiCo2O4/PANI and NiCo2O4/MWCNT/PANI coral-like nanostructured composites are 402, 645, 617 and 725 F/g, respectively, at the current density of 1 A/g. The analysis of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) data in this work reported perfectly by constant phase element (CPE) and provided trustable method to compare nanostructured composites.