Rapid ambient growth of copper sulfide microstructures: Binder free electrodes for supercapacitor

Metal chalcogenides are earth abundant, low cost, and less toxic materials with a good electrochemical activity and hence can be ideal materials for high performance supercapacitors. Here the copper sulfide is successfully deposited on copper foil by a rapid and ambient chemical route to form highly oriented and uniform microstructures. These films are adherent with a high surface area and porosity and also electrically conducting, hence can be used as binder free electrodes for supercapacitors. These devices were constituted with KOH as an electrolyte, which show a good electrochemical performances; specific capacitance 1173 Fg(-1) at 1 mVs(-1), specific energy 301.4 Whkg(-1), and specific power 1400 Wkg(-1) with a good cyclability. Hence, the proposed technique is simple and cost effective to form high performance supercapacitors.