Date of Award

Spring 4-22-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Chemistry

First Advisor

Ram Gupta

Second Advisor

Charles Neef

Third Advisor

Timothy Dawsey

Fourth Advisor

John Franklin

Abstract

The world’s increasing consumption of energy has led researchers to focus on research and development for high performance-energy devices. Development of materials used in energy devices is currently focused on improving the performance and stability of devices. Composite materials are well known as an effective way to improve the performance of an energy device. A composite is a combination of two or more materials with different properties, and such combinations can be of great help in advancing the performance of a composite material by adding the advantages or compensating for the disadvantages of each material.

In this study, ternary composite materials were synthesized by combining binary transition metal oxide (nickel cobalt oxide, nickel manganese oxide, manganese cobalt oxide) with reduced graphene oxide (rGO) and polyaniline (PANI). All ternary composite materials were prepared via successive employment of hydrothermal technique and polymerization of aniline. All materials were utilized as an electrode material for electrocatalysts and supercapacitor devices.

Ternary composite materials showed high activity towards oxygen evolution reaction, requiring low overpotential of 342, 340, 382 mV, and high electrocatalytic properties for hydrogen evolution reaction, achieving low overpotential of 134, 95, 117 mV for rGO/nickel cobalt oxide/ PANI, rGO/nickel manganese oxide/ PANI, and rGO/manganese cobalt oxide/PANI, respectively to reach a current density of 10 mA/cm2. Also, ternary composite materials showed a specific capacitance ranging from 145-285 F/g at a scan rate of 2 mV/s, along with high capacitance retention and coulombic efficiency up to 7,000 charge/discharge cycles.

Consequently, the results suggest that a ternary composite material has the potential to be efficiently used with a bifunctional purpose as an energy conversion and storage application material.

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