Facile hydrothermal synthesis of a tri-metallic Cu–Mn–Ni oxide-based electrochemical pseudo capacitor

Abstract

Transition metal oxide nanocomposites with heterostructures have gained a lot of attention for use in supercapacitors owing to their low cost, high surface area, fast transport of ions and electrons and high specific capacitance due to efficacious interplay between the electrode and the electrolytes. In this study, we fabricated tri-metallic Cu, Mn, Ni(CMNO), bi-metallic Mn, Ni(MNO) and mono-metallic Ni(NO) oxides through a facile hydrothermal route. All the fabricated materials were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDX), and their electrochemical properties were studied using cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and galvanostatic charge–discharge (GCD). The CMNO material showed remarkable electrochemical performance with a specific capacitance of 790.63 F g⁻¹ at a current density of 1 A g⁻¹, surpassing the performance of MNO (438.4 F g⁻¹) and NO (290.82 F g⁻¹). Furthermore, CMNO showed high cycling stability with a retention of 96.7% specific capacitance after 8000 cycles. Based on remarkable and unique properties, the CMNO material is regarded as a promising material for new-generation pseudo-capacitor applications.