Facile synthesis of MoO2 nanoparticles as high performance supercapacitor electrodes and photocatalysts

Molybdenum dioxide (MoO2) nanoparticles with the size of 200 nm in diameter were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method. The nanoparticles were directly functionalized as supercapacitors (SCs) electrodes and photocatalysts. The electrochemical studies showed that the SCs demonstrated high capacitance of 621 F g−1, which was 3 times larger than previous reports. Furthermore, they exhibited good cyclic performance with 90% capacity retention after 1000 cycles at a current density of 1 A g−1. The photocatalytic activities were evaluated by the degradation of methylene blue (MB) and rhodamine B (RhB), respectively, and the nanoparticles demonstrated preferred selectivity on the degradation of RhB (70%) than that of MB (30%).