Performance characteristics of supercapacitor electrodes made of silicon carbide nanowires grown on carbon fabric

In this paper, we report the supercapacitor electrodes with excellent cycle stability, which are made of silicon carbide nanowires (SiC NWs) grown on flexible carbon fabric. A high areal capacitance of 23 mF cm(-2) is achieved at a scan rate of 50 mV s(-1) at room temperature and capacitances increase with the rise of the working temperature. Owing to the excellent thermal stability of SiC NWs and carbon fabric, no observable decrease of capacitance occurs at room temperature (20 degrees C) after 10(5) cycles, which satisfies the demands of the commercial applications. Further increasing the measurement temperature to 60 degrees C, 90% of the initial capacitance is still retained after 10(5) cycles. This study shows that silicon carbide nanowires on carbon fabric are a promising electrode material for high temperature and stable micro-supercapacitors. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.