Facile Synthesis of Mesoporous CuO Nanoribbons for Electrochemical Capacitors Applications

Abstract

Mesoporous ribbon-like CuO has been synthesized via a facile and scaleable wet-chemical method, accompanied with tetraoctylammonium bromide (TOAB) as a soft template under ambient condition. Characterizations studies including x-ray diffraction spectroscopy (XRD), fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and high-resolutiontransmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) were applied to investigate the structure and morphology of the as-synthesized CuO. Further physical characterizations revealed that CuO nanoribbons owned a comparatively higher specific surface area with typical mesoporous appearance. The electrochemical properties of the mesoporous CuO were elucidated by cyclic voltammograms, galvanostatic chargedischarge tests in 6 M KOH electrolyte. Electrochemical data analysis demonstrated that as- synthesized CuO nanoribbons exhibited a higher specific capacitance of 137 F g-1 and stable cycling performance of only 12% capacitance loss after 500 cycles. These results suggest that the low-cost CuO electrode is a promising candidate for high-performance electrochemical capacitors.