Facile synthesis of morphology-controllable NiCo2S4 arrays on activated carbon textile as high-performance binder-free supercapacitor electrode

Abstract Binder-free electrodes provide great opportunities for the development of high-performance energy devices due to the absence of insulating and inactive binders. In this paper, NiCo2S4 arrays with attractive nanostructures were directly grown on activated carbon textile (ACT) by a facile one-pot hydrothermal method to develop a self-supported binder-free electrode. The nanostructures can be tuned from nanorods to nanosheets by simply controlling the concentration of the sulfur source. Both arrays exhibited battery-type behavior of the positive electrode, where the nanosheets arrays with relatively higher capacity of 183.2 mA h g−1 at 2 mA cm-2 and better cycling stability of 82.6 % capacitance retention after 1000 cycles was employed in an asymmetric supercapacitor (ASC) as positive electrode. The ASC exhibited excellent rate capability with the maximum specific energy of 56.2 Wh/kg and the specific power of 632.7 W/kg at the current density of 4 mA/cm2. The presented results are believed to be helpful to the design and application of promising flexible binder-free electrode for high-performance hybrid supercapacitors.