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.