In situ hydrothermal growth of ferric oxides on carbon cloth for low-cost and scalable high-energy-density supercapacitors

Nowadays, supercapacitor devices employed in the practical application have been growing rapidly, ranging from consumer electronics and hybrid electric vehicles to industrial electric utilities. However, there are certain disadvantages in the supercapacitors, including low energy density and high production cost, which are still considered to be tremendous challenges in their developments. Herein, a new kind of high-energy-density symmetric supercapacitor, energy density of 11.0 mWh cm(-3) and power density of 1543.7 mW cm(-3), has been designed using 2.0 M Li2SO4 aqueous solution as the electrolyte and carbon cloth (CC) with alpha-Fe2O3 nanoneedles grown on (CC/Fe2O3) as electrode materials. Furthermore, the fabrication of this kind of supercapacitor is low-cost, easily operational, environmentally friendly, practicable, and scalable, which indicates this method is feasible to fabricate cost-effective high-energy-density supercapacitors. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.