Novel Conductive Ag-Decorated NiFe Mixed Metal Telluride Hierarchical Nanorods for High-Performance Hybrid Supercapacitors

Mixed metal chalcogenide nanoarchitectures have been attracting enormous attention as battery-type electrodes for hybrid supercapacitors (HSCs) owing to their enhanced electrochemical (EC) performance. Despite having high electrical conductivity and good EC properties, tellurium has not been fully utilized in metal chalcogenide electrodes as much as sulfur and selenium. Herein, a facile strategy for the fabrication of nickel and iron (NiFe) mixed metal telluride hierarchical nanorods (MMT HNRs) on nickel foam (NF) is proposed. Furthermore, conductive silver (Ag) is decorated on MMT HNRs (AMMT HNRs) to improve the conducting channels, thereby EC performance. Benefitting from the combined advantages of electroactive NiFe mixed metal, conductive tellurium and Ag, and hierarchical nanorod-like nanomorphology, the AMMT HNR electrode has delivered high areal capacity (1.1 mAh cm–2). Finally, the AMMT based HSC with activated carbon coated NF (AC/NF) as a negative electrode exhibited the highest areal capacitance (1176.5 mF cm–2) with high areal energy density (0.669 mWh cm–2) and power density (64 mW cm–2). Moreover, the HSC device has maintained good cycling stability (86% capacity retention) even after 5000 cycles. New findings of this study definitely shed light on the development of telluride-based mixed metal chalcogenide supercapacitors.