Hydrothermal preparation of ZnO electrodes synthesized from different precursors for electrochemical supercapacitors

• ZnO particles are fabricated from zinc nitrate, acetate and chloride precursor by hydrothermal method at 140 °C.
• The ZnO particles obtained from different zinc salts showed different crystal structure.
• The obtained ZnO particles are used as electrodes for supercapacitor sand the capacitans value of ZnO electrodes were found around 5 F/g.

In this work, zinc oxide (ZnO) particles have been synthesized by hydrothermal technique using three different types of precursor solutions namely; zinc acetate, zinc chloride and zinc nitrate for active materials of supercapacitor (SC) electrode. The SC properties of ZnO powders were studied as a function precursor solution. The physical properties of the ZnO particles were analyzed with X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The electrochemical properties of the ZnO particles obtained from different precursors were investigated through cyclic voltammetry, galvanostatic charge/discharge measurements in a 6 M KOH electrolyte at a scan rate of 5 mV/s. The specific capacitance values of the ZnO electrodes obtained from nitrate, acetate and chloride precursor solutions were measured to be 5.87 F/g, 5.35 F/g and 4.14 F/g, respectively.