Premium
Sodium‐Salt‐Promoted Growth of Self‐Supported Copper Oxides with Comparative Supercapacitive Properties
Author(s) -
Chen Jun Song,
Huang Song Peng,
Xu Le,
Blackwood Daniel John
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
chemelectrochem
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.182
H-Index - 59
ISSN - 2196-0216
DOI - 10.1002/celc.201700804
Subject(s) - copper , materials science , supercapacitor , copper oxide , chemical engineering , substrate (aquarium) , oxide , salt (chemistry) , nanocrystal , nanostructure , hydrothermal circulation , electrode , inorganic chemistry , capacitance , nanotechnology , metallurgy , chemistry , organic chemistry , oceanography , engineering , geology
In this work, we developed a facile hydrothermal system to synthesize self‐supported copper oxides with different nanostructures. In this system, we used copper foam as both the substrate and the copper source, and selected a wide range of sodium salts to serve as directing agents, promoting the formation of copper oxide with different nanostructures. We first show that, at 30 mM of sodium fluoride, we can successfully grow nanocubes on the copper foam substrate that comprise both CuO and Cu 2 O. Such a mixed composition is unique among the investigated salts. However, if a lower concentration of NaF or a different salt is used, Cu 2 O nanocrystals of different structures, such as nanoplatelets or irregular particles, can be obtained. When these samples were tested in supercapacitors, they demonstrated contrasting pseudocapacitive properties where the initial mixed Cu 2 O/CuO nanocube sample demonstrated a very stable reversible capacitance of about 400 mF cm −2 for 1600 cycles. This is significantly higher than that for the other samples, as well as advantageous compared to other copper‐oxide‐based electrode materials. The impedance analysis suggested that such a performance could be attributed to the low diffusion resistance of this sample.