Ultrathin nickel sulfide nano-flames as an electrode for high performance supercapacitor; comparison of symmetric FSS-SCs and electrochemical SCs device

Metal sulfides have received well deserved attention due to their excellent electrical conductivity and thermal stability, as compared to metal oxides, allowing them to achieve a high capacitance and energy density for portable energy storage devices. In this study, the preparation of highly porous nano-flames composed of nickel sulfide (NiS) thin film on a cost effective, flexible stainless steel substrate through a trouble free, inexpensive and simple chemical bath deposition (CBD) method is reported. The prepared nano-flames composed of a NiS thin film demonstrates the excellent electrochemical features with a maximum specific capacitance ( C s ) of 750.6 F g −1 at a scan rate of 5 mV s −1 in a three electrode system. Furthermore, the portable symmetric flexible solid state supercapacitor (FSS-SC) and electrochemical supercapacitor (SC) are fabricated and tested. In comparison with the symmetric electrochemical SC, the symmetric FSS-SC shows an excellent electrochemical performance with a high C s of 104 F g −1 at 5 mV s −1 with a good electrochemical stability of 85.3% over 3000 CV cycles. This study constitutes the first comparison of symmetric FSS-SCs and electrochemical SCs formed with NiS nano-flames. Such an impressive symmetric FSS-SC is predicted to be an exceptionally promising candidate for energy storage systems. (a) The schematic for fabrication of the symmetric FSS-SCs device, (b) demonstration of FSS-SCs device with the glow of a red LED and (c) the performance comparison of symmetric FSS-SCs and electrochemical SCs device.