Preparation of Perovskite-type ZnSnO3 nanoparticles and enhancing their behavior as a positive electrode for supercapacitor applications

Abstract

This work aims to prepare perovskite zinc stannate (ZnSnO 3 ) by the sol-gel method and to study the electrochemical properties. This performance improves by adding different percentages of naturally prepared activated carbon from pomegranate peels. ZnSnO 3 is considered an attractive cathode material for energy storage, which shows a specific capacitance of 115 F g -1 at 1 A g -1 , while the optimum added percentage of the activated carbon is 5%AC+95%ZnSnO 3 , which exhibits 312.5 F g -1 at the same current density, which considered about three times more than that of the ZnSnO 3 , with capacitance retention of 66% after 2000 cycles at the current density of 10 A g -1 . The practical hybrid device shows a specific capacitance value of 61.6 F g -1 at 1 A g -1 , the specific energy of 22 Wh kg -1, and specific power of 1077 W kg -1 with capacitance retention of 50% of the initial capacitance after 2000 cycles at a current density of 10 A g -1 . As a result, ZnSnO 3 and its composite with cheap and natural materials are considered promising supercapacitor electrodes. The Nyquist plots show a semicircle in the high-frequency region and a near-vertical line at low frequency. The near-vertical line in the low-frequency region indicates the good capacitive of the composite electrode.