Tuning the porosity of mesoporous NiO through calcining isostructural Ni-MOFs toward supercapacitor applications

NiO has an unusually high theoretical specific capacitance and possess relatively high electrical conductivity compared to other metal oxides. However, the reported specific capacitance of the Ni0-based electrodes is far below the theoretical value up to now. In this paper, three porous NiO materials with different specific surface area were synthesized simply by calcining iso-structural Ni-based MOFs templates. The formation mechanism of NiO was discussed by taking into account the thermal behavior and intrinsic structural features of the NiMOFs. Taking advantages of the Ni-MOFs precursors, all prepared NiO compounds are mesoporous and their porosity can be tuned by the structure of MOFs. Specially, due to the high porosity, three NiO exhibited an improved electrochemical performance and the specific discharge capacitances are of 102, 105, and 116 F g(-1) at the current density of 1 A g(-1),respectively. The specific capacitance of 1-NiO-450 is approximately 93.2% of its maximum value after 3000 cycles, which obviously superior to most of the previously reported NiO electrode materials and suggests their promising applications in supercapacitors.