A Facile Method for the Preparation of α-Fe2O3/Reduced Graphene Oxides Nanocomposites as Electrode Materials for High Performance Supercapacitors

Abstract

In this work, a low-cost, fast, and environmental friendly microwave assisted chemical route to prepare hematite iron oxide (α-Fe2O3) nanoparticles/reduced graphene oxides (RGO) nanocomposites and their potential use as electrodes for the supercapacitors was presented. The x-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman, FESEM and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) studies confirmed that the prepared nanostructures have pure rhombohedral symmetry of Fe2O3 with hematite phase and high crystallinity. Morphological features obtained from Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analyses showed that the α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles possessed spherical shaped particles with size ranging from 10–20 nm, and the nanoparticles of α-Fe2O3 were found to be anchored on the surface of RGO sheets. Electrochemical studies were carried out using α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles and α-Fe2O3/RGO nanocomposites electrodes and their performances were compared. It was observed that that α-Fe2O3/RGO nanocomposites electrodes displayed higher specific capacitance of 356 F g−1 measured at a scan rate of 50 mV s−1, while, α-Fe2O3 nanoparticles showed a specific capacitance of 123 F g−1 at a similar scan rate. Furthermore, α-Fe2O3/RGO nanocomposites exhibited excellent cyclic stability for 2500 cycles measured at a scan rate of 50 mV s−1 with ~92% capacitance retention. The presented approach is promising for the mass production of high performance electrodes applied in energy storage device.