Effect of different nickel precursors on capacitive behavior of electrodeposited NiO thin films

In the present study, the effect of nickel precursors containing different anions like nitrate, chloride and sulphate on the morphology and pseudocapacitance behavior of NiO is investigated. The NiO samples were prepared by using a potentiondynamic electrodeposition technique in the three electrode cell. Cyclic voltammetry technique was exploited for potentiodynamic deposition of the films. The obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), etc. The XRD reveals the cubic crystal structure for all samples. The SEM micrograph shows nanoflakelike, up grown nanoflakes and honeycomb like nanostructured morphologies for nitrate, chloride and sulphate precursors respectively. The capacitive behavior of these samples was recorded using cyclic voltammetry (CV), charge-discharge and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) in 1 M KOH electrolyte. The specific capacitance values of NiO samples obtained using CV for nitrate, chloride and sulphate precursors were 136, 214 and 893 Fg−1 respectively, at the scan rate of 5 mVs−1. The charge discharge study shows high specific energy for the sample obtained from sulphate (23.98 Whkg−1) as compared to chloride (9.67 Whkg−1) and nitrate (4.9 Whkg−1), whereas samples of cholride (13.9 kWkg−1 and nitrate (10.5 kWkg−1) shows comparatively more specific power than samples obtained from sulphate (7.6 kWkg−1). The equivalent series resistance of NiO samples observed from EIS study are 1.34, 1.29 and 1.27 Ω respectively for nitrate, chloride and sulphate precursors. These results emphasizes that the samples obtained from sulphate precursors provides very low impedance through honeycomb like nanostructured morphology which supports good capacitive behavior of NiO.