Fuel aided synthesis of NiO flakes for electrochemical energy storage application

Porous NiO flakes are synthesized using rice starch composed of amylose and amylopectin polysaccharide incorporated porous network as fuel by combustion synthesis and characterized through XRD, SEM, TEM, HR-TEM, EDAX, TGA, FT-IR and XPS analytical methods. The performance of NiO flakes as an anode in Li-ion cells is examined. NiO anode exhibits a stable specific capacity of 193 mAh g(-1) even after 120 cycles and the stability of formed solid electrolyte interface (SEI) layer is authenticated by virtue of negligible capacity fading at higher current rate as confirmed from ex-situ analysis of cycled electrodes. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.