Fuel-Dependent Combustion Synthesis of CeCrO3 Nanomaterials: Morphological Control and Its Impact on Electrochemical Properties and Device Applications

Abstract

Perovskites exhibiting pseudocapacitance are among the leading energy storage materials as supercapacitors. The cations in perovskites significantly affect storage due to their involvement in redox reactions. CeCrO₃ (CCO), a challenging-to-synthesis perovskite, has not yet been investigated for its electrochemical performance. The electrochemical properties of a material heavily depend on each step of the synthesis method. The combustion synthesis of CCO is carried out with different fuels, such as glycine (G), citric acid (C), and sucrose (S), resulting in samples CCO-G, CCO-C, and CCO-S, respectively. This makes combustion with different fuels yield products with peculiar properties and variations in morphology. Consequently, all CCO samples using different fuels exhibit noticeable differences in their electrochemical properties. A systematic investigation is conducted to understand the suitability of CCO for supercapacitor applications. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and galvanostatic charge-discharge (GCD) techniques are performed in a 2 M KOH electrolyte. CCO-G exhibits the highest specific capacity among the samples, achieving the specific capacity of 461 C g^-1 at 1 A g^-1 current density. It maintains good cyclic stability of 72.98% even after 10,000 cycles at the current density of 10 A g^-1. To explore its practical applicability, a hybrid supercapacitor device is fabricated with activated carbon (AC) AC@Ni-foam as the negative electrode and CCO-G@Ni-foam as the positive electrode in a 2 M KOH electrolyte. This device demonstrates a specific capacity of 204.80 C g^-1 at 1 A g^-1 current density. The maximum specific energy the device achieves is 36.92 Wh kg^-1 at 1 A g^-1 current density, and the maximal specific power is 7.91 kW kg^-1 at current density of 20 A g^-1. These significant values emphasize the applicability of this novel material in the field of supercapacitors, paving the way for advanced energy solutions.