Studies on Porous Graphene, Oxides of Nickel and their Nanocomposites for Supercapacitor Application

Abstract

The research thesis entitled ‘STUDIES ON POROUS GRAPHENE, OXIDES OF NICKEL AND THEIR NANOCOMPOSITES FOR SUPERCAPACITOR APPLICATION’ deals with the synthesis, characterization and studies on supercapacitor application of some oxides of nickel and their nanocomposites with porous graphene. The work describes successful synthesis of seven different kinds of novel electrode materials such as PG, NiO, NF, NC, PGNiO, PGNF and PGNC using solvothermal method. All the synthesized electrode materials were carefully characterized for their structural, elemental and morphological properties by employing appropriate techniques such as XRD, Raman, XPS, FESEM, TEM, HRTEM and BET techniques. The electrode materials were investigated for their utility in the field of supercapacitors using an aqueous 2 M KOH electrolyte. The synthesized electrode materials exhibited high electrochemical activity due to the synergistic effects of the components of the nanocomposite materials. The nanocomposite electrode materials displayed high cyclic stability at a higher applied current density. The impressive electrochemical accomplishment is attributed to the presence of porous structure and good surface area of composites, which not only acted as an ion-buffering reservoir but also maintained the mechanical strength during the continuous charge-discharge cycles. The obtained results suggest that these novel nanostructured oxides and PG based nanocomposites are potential candidates as electrode materials for the application in supercapacitors.