Design and synthesis of ternary Co3O4/carbon coated TiO2 hybrid nanocomposites for asymmetric supercapacitors

Recently, attention has been focused on the synthesis and application of nanocomposites for supercapacitors, which can have superior electrochemical performance than single structured materials. Here, we report a carbon-coated TiO2/Co3O4 ternary hybrid nanocomposite (TiO2@C/Co) electrode for supercapacitors. A carbon layer was directly introduced onto the TiO2 surface via thermal vapor deposition. The carbon layer provides anchoring sites for the deposition of Co3O4, which was introduced onto the carbon-coated TiO2 surface by hydrazine and the thermal oxidation method. The TiO2@C/Co electrode exhibits much higher charge storage capacity relative to pristine TiO2, carbon-coated TiO2, and pristine Co3O4, showing a specific capacitance of 392.4 F g−1 at a scan rate of 5 mV s−1 with 76.2% rate performance from 5 to 500 mV s−1 in 1 M KOH aqueous solution electrolyte. This outstanding electrochemical performance can be attributed to the high conductivity and high pseudo-capacitive contributions of the nanoscale particles. To evaluate the capacitive performance of a supercapacitor device employing the TiO2@C/Co electrode, we have successfully assembled TiO2@C/Co//activated carbon (AC) asymmetric supercapacitors. The optimized TiO2@C/Co//AC supercapacitor could be cycled reversibly in the voltage range from 0 to 1.5 V, and it exhibits a specific capacitance of 59.35 F g−1 at a scan rate of 5 mV s−1 with a specific capacitance loss of 15.4% after 5000 charge–discharge cycles. These encouraging results show great potential in terms of developing high-capacitive energy storage devices for practical applications.