Partial conversion of current collectors into nickel copper oxide electrode materials for high-performance energy storage devices.

A novel substrate sacrifice process is proposed and developed for converting part of a current collector into supercapacitor active materials, which provides a new route in achieving high energy density of supercapacitor device. Part of a copper foam current collector is successfully converted into highly porous nickel copper oxide electrode for light- and high-performance supercapacitors. Remarkably, this strategy circumvents the problem associated with poor contact interface between electrode and current collector. Meanwhile, the overall weight of the supercapacitor could be minimized. The charge transfer kinetics is improved while the advantage of the excellent mechanical properties of metal current collector is not traded off. By virtue of this unique current collector self-involved architecture, the material derived from the current collector manifests large areal capacitance of 3.13 F cm(-2) at a current density of 1 A g(-1). The capacitance can retain 2.97 F cm(-2) at a much higher density (4 A g(-1)). Only a small decay of 6.5% appears at 4 A g(-1) after 1600 cycles. The strategy reported here sheds light on new strategies in making additional use of the metal current collector. Furthermore, asymmetric supercapacitor using both solid-state gel electrolyte and liquid counterpart are obtained and analyzed. The liquid asymmetric supercapacitor can deliver a high energy density up to 0.5 mWh cm(-2) (53 Wh kg(-1)) at a power density of 13 mW cm(-2) (1.4 kW kg(-1)).