Structural and electrochemical analysis of a novel co-electrodeposited Mn2O3–Au nanocomposite thin film

Abstract

In this work we report the fabrication of both pristine Mn₂O₃ and Mn₂O₃–Au composite thin films on an indium tin oxide (ITO) substrate by a one-step novel co-electrodeposition technique. From the electron microscopy study, we observed that these two films are morphologically different. The main aim of this study is to understand the effect of the nanostructure and metal integration on the electrochemical charge storage properties of these two films. Since a charge storage mechanism is possible through faradic red-ox reaction and non-faradic double layered process, electrochemical characterization and frequency response analysis indicate better charge storage properties of the composite system over pristine Mn₂O₃. The Mott–Schottky analysis is used for the charge carrier estimation which provides the electronic properties of both the samples. Besides the mechanism of the co-electrodeposition technique, we also discuss in detail the material characterization of both pristine Mn₂O₃ and Mn₂O₃–Au composite samples using XRD, EELS and electron microscopy analysis. To the best of our knowledge, the electrochemical properties of the Mn₂O₃–Au composite sample are reported here for the first time.