Supercapacitors based on microporous β-Ni(OH)2 nanorods

A peculiar architecture of a novel class one dimensional β-Ni(OH)2 nanorods synthesized by an optimized surfactant-free aqueous precipitation route has been lucratively exploited to fabricate highly efficient microporous electrodes for supercapacitors. These fabricated electrodes comprised of a highly porous overlay of interconnected nanoscale units with rod-shaped profile which terminates into jagged-like morphology. The surface area of these nanorods was found to be ∼91 m2 g−1. This architecture transcribes into a superior cycling performance (capacitance of 1150 F g−1 was achieved) with more than 99% of the initial capacitance being retained after 5000 charging/discharging cycles. Their outstanding intercalation/de-intercalation prerogatives have also been exploited to fabricate supercapacitor coin cells which reveal a significant power density of 52 kW kg−1 and energy density of 4 Wh kg−1 with extremely fast response time of 1.2 ms.