Facile preparation of nickel/carbonized wood nanocomposite for environmentally friendly supercapacitor electrodes

We are reporting a facile way to prepare nickel/carbon nanocomposites from wood as a novel electrode material for supercapacitors. The surface morphology and the structure of the as-prepared electrodes were studied by using X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results indicate that after high-temperature carbonization process, the wood is converted into graphitic carbon with nickel nanoparticles uniformly distributed within the three dimensional structure of the wood. Electrochemical characterization such as cyclic voltammetry (CV), electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and galvanostatic charge-discharge measurements were conducted. These results showed that the introduction of nickel into the carbonized wood improves the specific capacitance and the cyclic stability of the nanocomposite electrode over that of the pure carbonized wood electrode. The composite electrode displayed an enhanced capacitive performance of 3616 F/g at 8 A/g, and showed an excellent capacitance retention after 6000 charge-discharge cycles. These results endow the nickel nanoparticles impregnated carbonized wood with a great potential for future application in supercapacitors.