Structural, optical, and electrochemical properties of thermodynamically metastable MoO3

The present research study aimed to synthesize molybdenum oxide powder through a simple, low-cost, and scalable chemical coprecipitation method, resulting in a material that is sustainable and environmentally friendly for use in supercapacitors (SCs). The resulting as-synthesized material has been studied for its structural, optical, and electrochemical behavior. The X-ray diffraction study shows that the prepared molybdenum oxide has a polycrystalline nature with a hexagonal crystal structure. The prepared molybdenum oxide is found to have a direct band gap energy of 3.4 eV from the optical measurements. The electrochemical properties of molybdenum oxide pasted on nickel foam (MoO3-NF) were evaluated in 1 M potassium hydroxide electrolyte. It shows excellent specific capacitance of 502.22 F/g at 5 mV/s and higher energy density of 10.73 Wh/kg and power density of 200 W/kg at 3 mA/g. These results clearly demonstrate that chemically synthesized molybdenum oxide is a highly promising electrode material for SC applications.