Hydrothermal Synthesis of β-NiS Nanoparticles and Their Applications in High-Performance Hybrid Supercapacitors

Abstract

In this work, β-NiS nanoparticles (NPs) were efficiently prepared by a straightforward hydrothermal process. The difference in morphology between these NiS NPs was produced by adding different amounts of thiourea, and the corresponding products were denoted as NiS-15 and NiS-5. Through electrochemical tests, the specific capacity (Cs) of NiS-15 was determined to be 638.34 C g−1 at 1 A g−1, compared to 558.17 C g−1 for NiS-5. To explore the practical application potential of such β-NiS NPs in supercapacitors, a hybrid supercapacitor (HSC) device was assembled with activated carbon (AC) as an anode. Benefitting from the high capacity of the NiS cathode and the large voltage window of the device, the NiS-15//AC HSC showed a high energy density (Ed) of 43.57 W h kg−1 at 936.92 W kg−1, and the NiS-5//AC HSC provided an inferior Ed of 37.89 W h kg−1 at 954.79 W kg−1. Both HSCs showed excellent cycling performance over 6000 cycles at 10 A g−1. The experimental findings suggest that both NiS-15 and NiS-5 in this study can serve as potential cathodes for high-performance supercapacitors. This current synthesis method is simple and can be extended to the preparation of other transition metal sulfide (TMS)-based electrode materials with exceptional electrochemical properties.