Synthesis of ternary NiCo-MnO2 nanocomposite and its application as a novel high energy supercapattery device

NiCo /NiCoMn-mixed hydroxides and ternary NiCo-MnO2 electrode materials were successfully synthesised by a force-driven hydrolysis of hydrated nickel, cobalt and manganese nitrate salts at 40 degrees C for 2 h with an additional annealing step adopted in producing the NiCo-MnO2 sample. The morphological, structural, compositional and textural characterization of the samples were obtained using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and N2 physisorption respectively. The initial sample characterization confirmed bigger material agglomeration of the as-prepared mixed hydroxides compared to the NiCo-MnO2 sample which had small stacked sheet-like and porous morphology. Further sample analysis also confirmed a high degree of crystallinity in both the mixed hydroxides and NiCo-MnO2 samples with the elemental constituents existing in different oxidation states. One of the mixed hydroxides sample namely, NiCo(OH)(2) exhibited a specific surface area (SSA) of approximately 3.40m(2) g(-1) as compared to the ternary NiCo-MnO2 material which exhibited a higher SSA of 153.94m(2) g(-1). The ternary NiCo-MnO2 electrode exhibited the highest specific capacity of 132.1 mAh g(-1), compared to NiCo(OH)(2) and NiCoMn-triple hydroxide (NiCoMn-TH) electrodes which exhibited a specific ca-