Recovery of copper oxide nanoparticles from waste SIM cards for supercapacitor electrode material

Abstract

The advanced developments of supercapacitors are of great significance to meet the growing demands of portable electronic products. The current work describes the supercapacitive behavior of copper oxide nanoparticles recovered from waste SIM cards via one-pot green recovery route. The as-recovered copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) were characterized by spectral and analytical tools. In view of the potentiality of CuO in wide technological applications, the recovered CuO NPs were examined for their supercapacitive behavior. Typical pseudocapacitive behavior was noticed for the recovered CuO NPs with the specific capacitance of 542 Fg-1 at the current density of 1 Ag-1 by Galvanostatic Charge-Discharge (GCD) studies. The cyclic stability of CuO electrode material was obtained with 95.3% retention in specific capacitance even after 5000 GCD cycles. Moreover, Electrochemical impedance spectral (EIS) analysis revealed lower Equivalent series resistance (ESR) value, excellent rate and good reversibility response of CuO electrode. The prominent electrochemical properties of CuO NPs electrode proved its viable applicability for high performance supercapacitors.