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High performance aqueous asymmetric supercapacitor based on iron oxide anode and cobalt oxide cathode

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Abstract

We develop an asymmetric aqueous supercapacitor using iron oxide anode and cobalt oxide cathode. The anode was fabricated using electrospinning of carbon precursor/iron oxide precursor blend followed by pyrolysis and in situ electrochemical conversion (to oxide) to form the binder-free and freestanding composite anode which delivered a capacitance of 460 F/g at 1 A/g and retained 82% capacitance after 5000 cycles. The superior performance is attributed to easy electrolyte accessibility as well as the porous fibrous carbon morphology, facilitating volume expansion of iron oxide. The cobalt oxide cathode was prepared using a simple chemical synthesis technique. The electrodes were chosen based on high over potential to water splitting reactions in 6 M KOH electrolyte resulting in a potential window of 1.6 V. The asymmetric device operated in 1.6 V achieved a capacitance of 94.5 F/g at 0.5 A/g while retaining 75% of its capacitance after 12,000 cycles, delivering energy and power densities of 40.53 W h/kg and 2432 W/kg, respectively.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank National Science Foundation for funding this work under award numbers CMMI-1537827 and CMMI-1463170. We are very grateful to Drexel University Centralized Research Facility for the use of their characterization equipments. We would like to thank Dr. Mykola Seredych from Prof. Yury Gogotsi’s group and Bryan Byles from Prof. Ekaterina Pomerantseva’s group at Drexel University for their help with the surface area measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, respectively.

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  1. Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, USA

    Rahul Pai & Vibha Kalra

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  1. Rahul Pai
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Pai, R., Kalra, V. High performance aqueous asymmetric supercapacitor based on iron oxide anode and cobalt oxide cathode. Journal of Materials Research 33, 1199–1210 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1557/jmr.2018.13

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