Comparison of Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides for Electrochemical Supercapacitors

Layered two-dimensional (2D) materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are receiving increased interest for applications in energy storage due to their high specific surface area and versatile electronic structure. In this work, we prepare solvent stabilised dispersions of a variety of few-layer thick TMDC crystals (MoS2, MoSe2, WS2, and TiS2) by ultrasonication. The exfoliated materials were first characterised by a variety of techniques to determine their quality. These dispersions were then used to form supercapacitor electrodes by filtration, without use of any further conductive additives or polymeric binders. These thin layer TMDC electrodes were assembled into symmetrical coin-cell devices for comparative electrochemical testing. It was found that despite being the most widely studied material, MoS2 suffers from inferior charge storage properties compared to the much higher conductivity and lower density TiS2. Impedance spectroscopy was used to investigate the charge storage mechanisms inside the coin cells, which were found to consist of a combination of both rapid, but low magnitude, electric double layer capacitance and much slower, but higher magnitude, ion adsorption pseudocapacitance.