Designing 3D Highly Ordered Nanoporous CuO Electrodes for High-Performance Asymmetric Supercapacitors

• Published in: ACS applied materials & interfaces 2015-03, Vol.7 (8), p.4851-4860
• Main Authors: Moosavifard, Seyyed E, El-Kady, Maher F, Rahmanifar, Mohammad S, Kaner, Richard B, Mousavi, Mir F
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1944-8244; 1944-8252
• DOI: 10.1021/am508816t

The increasing demand for energy has triggered tremendous research efforts for the development of lightweight and durable energy storage devices. Herein, we report a simple, yet effective, strategy for high-performance supercapacitors by building three-dimensional pseudocapacitive CuO frameworks with highly ordered and interconnected bimodal nanopores, nanosized walls (∼4 nm) and large specific surface area of 149 m2 g–1. This interesting electrode structure plays a key role in providing facilitated ion transport, short ion and electron diffusion pathways and more active sites for electrochemical reactions. This electrode demonstrates excellent electrochemical performance with a specific capacitance of 431 F g–1 (1.51 F cm–2) at 3.5 mA cm–2 and retains over 70% of this capacitance when operated at an ultrafast rate of 70 mA cm–2. When this highly ordered CuO electrode is assembled in an asymmetric cell with an activated carbon electrode, the as-fabricated device demonstrates remarkable performance with an energy density of 19.7 W h kg–1, power density of 7 kW kg–1, and excellent cycle life. This work presents a new platform for high-performance asymmetric supercapacitors for the next generation of portable electronics and electric vehicles.