Synthesis and Characterisation of vanadium disulphide and its composites for supercapacitor applications

Abstract

Vanadium disulphide/graphene foam composite samples with varying physical and electrochemical properties were synthesised through varying the mass of graphene in the composite. The optimized VS2/GF-100 mg exhibited superior specific capacity of 38 mAh g-1 which was larger than 31 mA h g-1 of the pristine (VS2) at a specific current of 0.5 A g-1. A hybrid capacitor was then assembled by using VS2/GF-100 mg as the positive electrode and activated sugar carbon (ACS) as the negative electrode material in 2 M KOH. The hybrid device of VS2/GF-100 mg/ ACS provided a specific energy of 24 Wh kg-1 and a specific power of 494 W kg-1 at a specific current of 0.5 A g-1. The device showed a high cycling stability with 86.5 % capacity retention for 15 000 charge discharge cycles at 5 A g-1.