Hydrothermal preparation of ZnO electrodes synthesized from different precursors for electrochemical supercapacitors

In this work, zinc oxide (ZnO) particles have been synthesized by hydrothermal technique using three different types of precursor solutions namely; zinc acetate, zinc chloride and zinc nitrate for active materials of supercapacitor (SC) electrode. The SC properties of ZnO powders were studied as a function precursor solution. The physical properties of the ZnO particles were analyzed with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The electrochemical properties of the ZnO particles obtained from different precursors were investigated through cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements in a 6 M KOH electrolyte at a scan rate of 5 mV/s. The specific capacitance values of the ZnO electrodes obtained from nitrate, acetate and chloride precursor solutions were measured to be 5.87 F/g, 5.35 F/g and 4.14 F/g, respectively. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.