Synthesis of dragon fruit tree-like hierarchical NiCo2O4 growth on carbon cloth and its supercapacitive performance

Abstract

Dragon fruit tree-like hierarchical NiCo2O4 was grown on carbon cloth by one-pot solvothermal reaction with the help of surfactant at a relatively low temperature. XRD results showed that all diffraction peaks from the spinel structure of NiCo2O4 can be found in the NiCo2O4/carbon cloth with weak diffraction intensity in compared with the carbon diffraction peaks of carbon cloth. SEM observation shows the unique dragon fruit tree-like NiCo2O4 was uniformly coated on carbon cloth. Electrochemical characterization shows the specific capacitance of NiCo2O4/carbon cloth electrode reaches 815 F g−1 at 2 A g−1 and maintains 600 F g−1 at 20 A g−1. An asymmetric supercapacitor delivers 54.8 F g−1 at 5 A g−1 and keeps capacitance retention almost 100% after 10,000 cycles, demonstrating a promising route to prepare high performance NiCo2O4 free-standing electrode. Keywords: NiCo2O4 materials, Carbon cloth, Hierarchical structure, Supercapacitors