Studying the Supercapacitive behavior of Co3O4 Decorated on the Chitosan/GM

Supercapacitors have been in the center of attention because of their high power density, long cycle life ( 100 000 cycles), and rapid charging-discharging rates. According to the mechanism through which they store the charge, they are basically classified into two types: electric double layer capacitors (EDLCs) based on carbon electrodes and pseudo-capacitors with certain metal oxides (RuO2, IrO2, Co3O4, MnO2, NiO) or conducting polymers as electrode materials [1-4]. Co3O4 is being studied as a candidate material for pseudo-capacitor electrode because it has a high theoretical specific capacitance and good electrochemical capability [5-7].In this work we synthesized urchin-like Co3O4, which is composed of nanorods, deposited on Chitosan/GO-MWCNT (CS/GM) as a template, via simple hydrothermal method. The synthesized nanocomposite has been characterized by Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), as well as energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX). The electrochemical performance of CS/GM/Co3O4 was studied by cyclic voltammetry (CV), galvanostatic charge–discharge (CD) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques in 0.5 M KOH. The high specific capacitance of 1632.28 F g-1 was obtained. This nanocomposite not only exhibits a high specific capacitance but also have a good cycling stability even at high current density of 100 A.g-1, which can keep capacitance retention of 90.82% after 500 cycles.