One-step hydrothermal synthesis of high-performance stable Ni-doped 1T-MoS2 electrodes for supercapacitors

Elemental-doped is considered as an effective strategy to modulate the electronic structure of Metallic MoS2 (i.e., 1T-MoS2) and enhance its electrochemical performance. Herein, DFT is applied to predict the electronic structure of different transition metals (TMs) doped 1T-MoS2. Based on the results, stable Ni-doped 1T-MoS2 (N3MS) is synthesized in a propionic acid (PA) aided system. Electrochemical tests show that N3MS possesses an excellent specific capacitance of 2461.2 F·g−1 at 1 A·g−1 and a cycle retention rate of 85.67 % at 10 A·g−1 for 1000 cycles due to the critical contribution of Ni-doped to electronic structure modulation. Meanwhile, in-situ Raman measurements show that the active sites of N3MS are Mo3+ and Ni2+. The assembled N3MS//ZnO/ZnS-C hybrid device shows a specific capacitance of 242.28 F·g−1 at 1 A·g−1, an excellent energy density of 65.96 Wh·kg−1 at the power density of 700 W·kg−1 and the excellent stability for up to 2000 cycles (77.26 % retention at 5 A·g−1). This work proves the significant contribution of elemental doping to modulate electronic structures and improve electrochemical performance.