Highly mesoporous LaNiO₃/NiO composite with high specific surface area as a battery-type electrode

This study reports the fabrication and characterization of mesoporous LaNiO₃/NiO composite with a very high specific surface area for a battery-type electrode. The mesoporous LaNiO₃/NiO composite was synthesized via a sol–gel method by using silica gel as a template, the colloidal silica gel was obtained by the hydrolysis and polymerization of tetraethoxysilane in the presence of La and Ni salts. We investigated the structure and the electrochemical properties of mesoporous LaNiO₃/NiO composite in detail. The mesoporous composite sample showed a specific surface area of 372 m² g⁻¹ with 92.7% mesoporous area and displayed remarkable electrochemical performance as a battery-type electrode material for supercapacitor. The specific capacity values were found to be 237.2 mAh g⁻¹ at a current density of 1 A g⁻¹ and 128.6 mAh g⁻¹ at a high current density of 20 A g⁻¹ in 1 M KOH aqueous electrolyte. More importantly, this mesoporous composite also showed an excellent cycling performance with the retention of 92.6% specific capacitance after 60,000 charging and discharging cycles.