Promising Rice-Husk-Derived Carbon/Ni(OH)2 Composite Materials as a High-Performing Supercapacitor Electrode

Improving the electrochemical performance of biomass-derived carbon electrode-active materials for supercapacitor applications has recently attracted considerable attention. Herein, we develop hybrid electrode materials from rice-husk-derived porous carbon (RH-C) materials and β-Ni­(OH)2 via a facile solid-state reaction strategy comprising two steps. The prepared RH-C/Ni­(OH)2 (C–Ni) was investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) (energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS)), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) to acquire the physical and chemical information, which was used to demonstrate the successful fabrication of C–Ni. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) measurement results confirmed that the thermal stability of C–Ni changed due to the presence of Ni­(OH)2. As expected, C–Ni possesses a high capacitance of ∼952 F/g at a current density of 1.0 A/g. This result is higher than that of pure biomass-based carbon materials under the three-electrode system. This facile preparation method, which was used to synthesize the electrode-active materials, can extend to the value-added utility of other waste biomass materials as high-performing supercapacitor electrodes for energy storage applications.