Ni-Co layered double hydroxide with self-assembled urchin like morphology for asymmetric supercapacitors

•This paper has a simple synthesis method: one-step hydrothermal method.•Ni-Co layered double hydroxide has a self-assembly sea urchin like structure.•The morphology of Ni-Co layered double hydroxide porous structure determines the large specific surface area. We report a simple method for the preparation of 3D structure sea urchins Ni-Co layered double hydroxide (NiCo-LDH) with one-step hydrothermal self-assembly. The obtained NiCo-LDH has large specific surface area, porous structure and large interlayer spacing, which causes excellent electrochemical performance. The specific capacitance of the NiCo-LDH electrode, can reach 808.4 C g−1 at the current density of 1 A g−1. Moreover, asymmetric supercapacitors fabricate dusing the negative carbon as positive electrode and NiCo-LDH as activated electrode displays a high energy density of 41.46 Wh/kg at a 212.68 W/kg power density at 1 A g−1.