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With the efficient use of sustainable sunlight, the development of the novel photo-assisted supercapacitor electrode is a practical method to improve energy storage performance by sunlight irradiation. Herein, the new type of self-standing NiCo 2 O 4 /Cu 2 O photoelectrode with dual-component pseudocapacitive NiCo 2 O 4 and photosensitive Cu 2 O are successfully synthesized on copper foam via an ultra-simple approach. Intriguingly, the copper foam substrate is ingeniously designed to serve as the growth skeleton for the formation of NiCo 2 O 4 as well as the light-sensitive copper source, which significantly simplifies the preparation process of the photoelectrode. The NiCo 2 O 4 /Cu 2 O photo-assisted electrode demonstrates markedly high specific capacitance of 7.16F cm −2 at 1 mA cm −2 under light irradiation (the light intensity is 100 mW cm −2 ), which far exceeds those of conventional similar active materials. A maximum energy density of 105.38 Wh kg −1 at power density of 1.86kW kg −1 is demonstrated by the photo-assisted supercapacitor under light. More importantly, this work builds the energy band structure by DFT calculations and the electron transfer path in NiCo 2 O 4 /Cu 2 O heterojunction , which contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanism of photo-assisted supercapacitors.
Zhang et al. (Wed,) studied this question.