Abstract

Manufacturing proper electrodes for supercapacitors including high capacitance is of great importance for current increased demand for energy storage devices. In this paper, we evaluated metal nanoparticles infused in electrospun carbon nanofibers (ECNF) synthesized by electrospinning, followed by thermal treatment for supercapacitors? electrode applications. The electrodes were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and cyclic voltammetry. The characterization results indicated that the metal/ECNF samples have fibrous morphology, porous structure with a high specific surface area, including dispersed metal nanoparticles. The effect of embedding various transition metals, such as Co, Ni, and Cu on the electrochemical performance of ECNF has been investigated. The incorporation of Cu into ECNF resulted in the highest specific capacitance. At the scan rate of 5 mV s-1, the specific capacitance of the Cu/ECNF sample was 332 F g-1 while it was 4 F g-1 for the ECNF sample.