High surface wetting and conducting NiO/PANI nanocomposites as efficient electrode materials for supercapacitors

Abstract

In this work, A series of facile citric acid-assisted gel combustion synthesized cubic structured nickel oxide nanoparticles (NiO NPs) filled polyaniline (PANI) were prepared via in-situ chemical oxidative polymerization method. The effect of different mass percent loaded NiO NPs on the PANI matrix and its crystalline structure, thermal stability, morphology, direct current (DC) conductivity, and electrolyte solvent affinity were investigated with the help of XRD, FTIR, TGA-DTA, SEM with EDS, UV–Vis absorption, current-voltage (I-V) characteristics, and contact angle (CA) measurements. Among all prepared nanocomposites 20 wt% loaded NiO NPs per anilinium chloride (C6H8ClN) weight (NiP3) showed the highest conductivity of about 6.09 × 10−2 S cm−1, good thermal stability over the range of 40–800 °C, and better electrolyte swelling ability with CA of 43.9°. So, this optimized nanocomposite was subjected to electrochemical analysis in 1 M HCl solution using cyclic voltammetry (CV), Galvanometric charge-discharge (GCD), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). From 10 mV s−1 scan rated CV the Csp, Ea,c, and E(HE/OE)-pa for NiP3 voltammogram was found to be 480 F g−1, 0.4116 V, 0.7531 V respectively. Further, the results have confirmed that the specific capacitance of NiP3 was enhanced enormously than the pristine PANI.