Microstructural And Electrochemical Supercapacitive Properties Of Metal Oxide And Nitride Based Thin Film Electrodes Prepared By Reactive Magnetron Sputtering Technique

Abstract

The present thesis reports on the microstructural and electrochemical supercapacitive properties of metal oxide (Mn doped CuO and Cr doped CuO) and metal nitride (Cu doped Mo3N2, Cr doped VN and Mn3N2) thin film electrodes. All the thin film electrodes were deposited on type 304 stainless steel (SS-304), microscopic glass slides and Si (100) substrates using RF/DC reactive magnetron sputtering technique. Investigation on the thin film electrodes was carried out to study the effect of different dopants, dopant concentration, substrate temperature and different electrolytes on the microstructural and supercapacitive properties. newline newlineCharacterization of the thin film electrodes was carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), atomic force microscope (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Raman spectroscopy. Moreover, the electrochemical supercapacitive properties of the as-deposited thin film electrodes were studied by using cyclic voltammetry (CV). Also, galvanostatic cycling with potential limitation (GCPL) technique was used to examine the charge-discharge (CD) properties and the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) technique was used to investigate the electrochemical supercapacitor properties. newline newlineNanostructured Cr doped CuO thin films were prepared at different substrate temperature in the range of 373-673 K using a reactive magnetron co-sputtering technique for electrochemical supercapacitor. The formation of monoclinic phase of CuO and Cr doped CuO thin films newline newline newline newlinewith uniform distribution of particles were determined by XRD and FE- SEM with X-ray mapping investigations, respectively. The electrochemical measurements revealed that the thin film electrode developed at 573 K exhibited the maximum capacitance of 201 mF cm-2 for Cr doped CuO electrode at a scan rate of 10 mV s-1, which was five- fold higher than that of un-doped CuO (38 mF cm-2). Also. the Cr substitution did not change the primary monoc