Self-Assembly of Parallelly Aligned NiO Hierarchical Nanostructures with Ultrathin Nanosheet Subunits for Electrochemical Supercapacitor Applications.

Parallelly aligned NiO hierarchical nanostructures were fabricated using a templated self-assembly method followed by calcinations, where rationally employed pluronic triblock copolymers (P123) are acting as molecular templates for geometrical manipulation of nanocrystals and short-chain alcohols are acting as cosolvents and cosurfactants. Such aligned nanostructure is constructed orderly with several ultrathin two-dimensional (2D) nanosheet subunits with an exceptionally small thickness of only 3 nm in a high degree of orientation and separation. Moreover, the number of assembled nanosheets in a unit can be tuned by changing the concentration of the involving P123. This is the first time to synthesize highly hierarchically ordered and bilaterally symmetrical nanostructures, distributed in diameter of around 200-300 nm, via self-assembly in the liquid phase without solid substrates. The as-synthesized NiO delivered high capacitances of 418 F/g at the current density of 2 A/g with well cycling stability (still maintained 85% after 2000 cycles) and 333 F/g at 10 A/g in rates performance after 60 cycles. These fine electrochemical performances are supposed to be attributed to the hierarchical structures with high specific surface area (SSA, ∼164.87 m(2)/g) and ordered multilevel mesopores, which facilitate the electrolyte accessibility and provide more active sites for redox reaction.