A Facile Method for the Preparation of α-Fe2O3/Reduced Graphene Oxides Nanocomposites as Electrode Materials for High Performance Supercapacitors

In this work, a low-cost, fast, and environmental friendly microwave assisted chemical route to prepare hematite iron oxide (a-Fe2O3) nanoparticles/reduced graphene oxides (RGO) nanocomposites and their potential use as electrodes for the supercapacitors was presented. The x-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, FESEM and high resolu-tion transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) studies confirmed that the prepared nanostructures have pure IP: 8.46.247.10 On: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 07:13:10 rhombohedral symmetry of Fe2O3 with hematite phase and hgh crystallinity. Morphological features obtained Copyright: American Scientific Publishers Delivered by Ingenta from Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) anal-yses showed that the a-Fe2O3 nanoparticles possessed spherical shaped particles with size ranging from 10-20 nm, and the nanoparticles of a-Fe2O3 were found to be anchored on the surface of RGO sheets. Electro-chemical studies were carried out using a-Fe2O3 nanoparticles and a-Fe2O3/RGO nanocomposites electrodes and their performances were compared. It was observed that that a-Fe2O3/RGO nanocomposites electrodes displayed higher specific capacitance of 356 F g-1 measured at a scan rate of 50 mV s-1, while, a-Fe2O3 nanoparticles showed a specific capacitance of 123 F g-1 at a similar scan rate. Furthermore, a-Fe2O3/RGO nanocomposites exhibited excellent cyclic stability for 2500 cycles measured at a scan rate of 50 mV s-1 with similar to 92% capacitance retention. The presented approach is promising for the mass production of high performance electrodes applied in energy storage device.

Automated summary

This work presents a low-cost, fast, and environmentally friendly method for preparing hematite iron oxide nanoparticles/reduced graphene oxide nanocomposites as electrodes for supercapacitors. The prepared nanocomposites showed high specific capacitance and excellent cyclic stability, making them promising for mass production of high-performance electrodes for energy storage devices.