Porous CeNiO3 with an enhanced electrochemical performance and prolonged cycle life (>50 000 cycles) via a lemon-assisted sol–gel autocombustion method

Abstract

The CeNiO₃ (CNO) supercapattery is an emerging energy-storage device. It brings together the high specific power of supercapacitors and the high specific energy of batteries. In general, the porous nature, composition and microstructure are the key factors that enhance the specific capacity and rate capability, and prolong the life cycle of an electrode material in an energy-storage device. In this study, porous CNO (P-CNO) is synthesized using a lemon-assisted sol–gel autocombustion method. Here we propose a lemon-assisted synthesis approach to obtain an enhanced electrochemical capacity along with a prolonged cycle life. The porous nature of the material improves the surface area and electrochemical performance by creating more electrochemical active sites. The P-CNO exhibits a specific capacity of 605 C g⁻¹ and 191.5 C g⁻¹ at a current density of 1 A g⁻¹ in three-electrode and two-electrode systems, respectively. Then, to examine a real-life application, a device is fabricated with CNO as the anode and cathode. This symmetric cell configuration can deliver a high specific energy of 43.45 W h kg⁻¹ at a specific power of 800 W kg⁻¹. Furthermore, the device achieves a prolonged cycle life of over 50 000 cycles whilst retaining 114.21% of its initial capacity and hence presenting a new material evolution for the energy-storage field.