Unleashing the Full Potential of Electrochromic Heterostructured Nickel-Cobalt Phosphate for Optically Active...

The rational design of hybrid systems that combine capacitor and battery merits is crucial to enable the fabrication of high energy and power density devices. However, the development of such systems remains a significant barrier to overcome. Herein, we report the design of a Ni-Co phosphate (Ni_3-Co(PO₄)₂·8H₂O) nanoplatelet-based system via a facile coprecipitation method at ambient conditions. The nanoplatelets exhibit multicomponent synergy, exceptional charge storage capabilities, rich redox active sites (ameliorating the redox reaction activity), and high ionic diffusion rate/electron transfer kinetics. The designed Ni_3-Co(PO₄)₂·8H₂O offered a respectable gravimetric specific capacity and marvelous capability rate (966 and 595 C g^-1 at 1 and 15 A g^-1) over the Ni₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O (327.3 C g^-1) and Co₃(PO₄)₂·8H₂O (68 C g^-1) counterparts. Additionally, the nanoplatelets showed enhanced photoactive storage performance with a 9.7% increase in the recorded photocurrent density. Upon integration of Ni_3-Co(PO₄)₂·8H₂O as a positive pole and commercial activated carbon as a negative pole, the constructed hybrid supercapacitor device with PVA@KOH quasi-gel electrolyte exhibits great energy and power densities of 77.7 Wh kg^-1 and 15998.54 W kg^-1 with remarkable cycling stability of 6000 charging/discharging cycles and prominent Coulombic efficiency of 100%. Interestingly, two assembled devices are capable of glowing a red LED bulb for nearly 180 s. This research paves the way to design and fabricate electroactive species via a facile approach for boosting the design of a plethora of supercapattery devices.