β-Cobalt sulfide nanoparticles decorated graphene composite electrodes for high capacity and power supercapacitors

Abstract

Electrochemical supercapacitors have drawn much attention because of their high power and reasonably high energy densities. However, their performances still do not reach the demand of energy storage. In this paper β-cobalt sulfide nanoparticles were homogeneously distributed on a highly conductive graphene (CS–G) nanocomposite, which was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy analysis, and exhibit excellent electrochemical performances including extremely high values of specific capacitance (∼1535 F g⁻¹) at a current density of 2 A g⁻¹, high-power density (11.98 kW kg⁻¹) at a discharge current density of 40 A g⁻¹ and excellent cyclic stability. The excellent electrochemical performances could be attributed to the graphene nanosheets (GNSs) which could maintain the mechanical integrity. Also the CS–G nanocomposite electrodes have high electrical conductivity. These results indicate that high electronic conductivity of graphene nanocomposite materials is crucial to achieving high power and energy density for supercapacitors.